Early surgery in Crohn’s disease a benefit in selected cases

Table 3 Comparison of early vs initial medical therapy in Crohn’s disease n (%)

		Initial medical therapy (n = 115)
Clinical details	Early surgery (n = 42)	Initial medical therapy (n = 115)	P value	Deferred surgery (n = 62)1	P value
Number requiring surgery
3 yr	5 (11.9)	24 (20.7)	0.250	5 (8.1)	0.521
5 yr	6 (14.2)	36 (31.3)	0.041	10 (16.1)	NS
Completion of study period	7 (16.7)	62 (53.9)	< 0.0001	20 (32.3)	0.110
Number of admission to hospital per patient, median (IQR)	1 (1-2)	3 (1-5)	0.012	2 (1-4.5)	0.002
Days in hospital (d), median (IQR)	12.5 (9-22.5)	11 (3-28)	0.230	17 (8-28)	0.347
Medical therapy
Immune modulator	32 (76.2)	101 (87.8)	0.083	54 (87.1)	0.189
Steroids	12 (28.6)	34 (29.6)	NS	23 (37.1)	0.404
Anti-TNF	14 (33.3)	69 (60.0)	0.004	42 (67.7)	0.001
No requirement for medical therapy	10 (23.8)	5 (4.3)	0.008	0 (0)	< 0.0001
Follow-up months (mo), median (IQR)	67 (31-114)	97 (58-150)		64 (19-121)

¹Data for this subset regarding length of stay and hospital admissions was taken from the date of first operation and not from date of diagnosis. IQR: Interquartile range; TNF: Tumour necrosis factor; NS: Not significant.