Inflammatory bowel disease: a proposal to facilitate the achievement of an unequivocal diagnosis.

Following the international guidelines criteria an adequate "diagnostic conclusion" of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) can be achieved only if clinical, endoscopic and laboratory findings, together with sample technical adequacy and unequivocal histomorphological signs of the disease are available. Thus, a conclusive diagnosis requires a complex combination of clinical, endoscopic and histological data. A considerable number of endoscopic biopsies obtained from IBD patients do not meet the above-mentioned requirements. The aim of the present proposal is to introduce a binary system of evaluation in the "diagnostic conclusion" of the histopathological report that will help to simplify the clinical decisions and consequent patient management. In patients with no history of disease, the pathologist should classify the biopsies in "Diagnostic", when the criteria established by the international guidelines are satisfied and "not diagnostic" when one or more of the above-mentioned criteria are not met. The term "not diagnostic" should replace "highly suggestive" and "probable". This new terminology could avoid ambiguous expressions that encourage the clinician to classify the patient as affected by IBD without fulfilling all of the requirements for an accurate diagnostic approach.