Comparison Between Chromoendoscopy and Virtual Chromoendoscopy (NBI, I-scan, FICE) for Detection of Neoplasia in Long Standing Ulcerative Colitis

The risk for colon cancer in patients with longstanding ulcerative colitis exceeding the rectum is increased and therefore patients should be enrolled in a surveillance program eight years after the diagnosis. Until today, official international guidelines for endoscopic screening in patients with ulcerative colitis advise to take 4 biopsies every 10 centimeters (with a minimum of 32) and of each suspected visible lesion. These guidelines are merely based on consensus during expert opinion meetings rather than evidence based. Recent studies have shown that chromo-endoscopy guided biopsies significantly reduced the number of biopsies for each procedure and detected more neoplastic lesions. Chromo-endoscopy is therefore considered the gold standard in this study in which we want to compare it to the performance and efficiency of new endoscopic imaging techniques. Narrow-Band Imaging (NBI)