Correlation of Endoscopic and Histologic Severity Scores in Pediatric Ulcerative Colitis at First Presentation

Detailed histologic scoring systems have been developed for the assessment of disease activity in ulcerative colitis. Literature from adult patients has shown some correlation between endoscopy and histology, and reproducibility of histologic scoring systems has also been supported. The effectiveness of endoscopic appearance at predicting histologic scores in pediatric patients has not been well studied, and none of the histologic scoring systems used in adults have had interobserver reproducibility assessed in pediatric patients. We reviewed endoscopic images and concurrent biopsies using Mayo and Geboes scores from the distal colon and rectum in untreated pediatric patients at the presentation of presumed ulcerative colitis based on clinical and endoscopic findings. Interobserver concordance was calculated by weighted-kappa statistic. The averaged histologic scores were compared to endoscopy scores using Spearman’s coefficient. Correlation between endoscopic score and each histologic score was weakly to moderately positive, whereas interobserver agreement for histologic scores was fair to moderate, suggesting that the Geboes scoring system has value in pediatric patients. For each histologic parameter, the average score was lower than the average endoscopic score. Examination of larger pediatric cohorts, treated patients, correlations of clinical outcomes with individual histologic parameters, and alternate scoring systems may contextualize these findings.