P413 General impressions about nutrition in patients with inflammatory bowel disease using a nutritional survey

Abstract

Background Malnutrition is a frequent problem in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) due to the increase in caloric consumption because of the pathology itself and due to the reduced intake. This low intake is mainly caused by the symptoms and the anorexia associated with the disease, but it is more and more common for patients to adopt elimination diets. Our aim was to investigate the general ideas about nutrition in patients with IBD, as well as to determine whether they consider that health professionals value the nutritional aspect. Methods Inclusion of patients with an established diagnosis of IBD followed-up in the unit of the Hospital Universitario La Paz, using an anonymised survey for the researcher and for the attending physician. Results A total of 118 patients were included, of which 56% (65 patients) were women. The mean age of the patients was 48.84 years (SD 14.2). All patients had a previous diagnosis of IBD: 51.7% (61 patients) ulcerative colitis (UC), 45% (53 patients) Crohn’s disease (CD) and 3.3% (4 patients) undetermined colitis. 55.6% (64 patients) believed that nutrition influenced the course of their IBD. The patients who answered yes were on average younger (44.5 vs. 53.9 years), these differences being statistically significant (p = 0.0003). Only 22 of the 64 patients (34.4%) believed that it was caused by a specific food or food group and the most frequent answer was food rich in fats, dairy products, alcohol or spices. 52.1% of the sample (61 patients) had eliminated some food from the diet since the diagnosis of IBD. The most noteworthy was the avoiding of dairy products (37%), fibre in 28% (most of them reducing the intake of fruits and vegetables), alcoholic drinks (17%) and carbonated drinks (11.5%). No statistically significant differences were found in the elimination of food from the diet according to age, sex or type of IBD. No differences were observed in the elimination of dairy products, carbonated drinks or alcoholic beverages depending on the type of IBD, being more frequent the elimination of fibre in patients with UC (7/10 patients) than in CD. Regarding the role of their attending physician, 77.5% (86 patients) thought that nutrition was important for their doctor and/or nurse dedicated to IBD, although only 52.6% (61 patients) believed they had received enough information for their pathology. Conclusion The health professionals dedicated to IBD should increase our efforts to properly inform patients about nutritional aspects, since in our experience more than a half of patients avoid one or more foods (without scientific evidence to support it). Furthermore, only 52.6% consider that they receive sufficient information regarding this matter.