Epidemiology and Clinical Characteristics of Ulcerative Colitis in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province, Iran

 Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory bowel disease, which is spreading continuously. This study aimed to determine the epidemiologic profile of the patients with UC in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, Iran, as a database for other researches.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on the profiles of the patients with a definitive diagnosis of UC during 2012-2016 in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari in 2019. All the samples were selected through the census method. The data consisted of demographic characteristics, clinical features, as well as colonoscopy and histopathology results, and other symptoms which were collected based on the checklists. The data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 22); moreover, the qualitative and quantitative variables were reported using frequency and percentage as well as mean and standard deviation, respectively.

This study analyzed 177 UC patients with a mean age of 38.31±11.69 years. According to the findings, the 31-40-year-old group was the most vulnerable age group. Regarding gender, 59.3% of the patients were male. The mean duration between the onset of the symptoms and diagnosis was reported as 7±11.51 years. The most common symptoms were bleeding (72%) and abdominal pain (53%). Moreover, erythema (63.27%) and erosion (54.8%) were the most prevalent complications based on the pathologic findings. Extra-intestinal manifestations were reported among 18.36% of the cases. Considering the involved locations, pancolitis (36.72%) and the inflammation of rectosigmoid (35.6%) were the most common types.

The results of this study were similar to the findings of other investigations in terms of demographic characteristics. On the other hand, the clinical symptoms and complications of the disease were different from those in some previous studies.