Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic, remitting and segmental inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract, radiological examinations play critical roles in the diagnosis of CD. The common radiological examinations include ultrasound examinations of intestine, computed tomography enterography (CTE), and magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) in clinic. The application of CTE and MRE is limited because of radiation exposure or higher costs. The ultrasound examinations of intestine including conventional intestinal ultrasound, ultrasonic elastography, and contrast-enhanced ultrasound have been studied because of the advantages of non-invasiveness and convenience. The accuracy of the intestinal ultrasound has been already partially validated in assisting diagnosis and evaluating the disease activity and location in CD patients. This review aims at summarizing the diagnostic potency and prospect of the application of ultrasound examinations of intestine in CD patients.
ObjectiveTo investigate the current research status and its developing trend of Crohn’s disease (CD) in Chinese journals in the past 40 years, and to provide reference for future research on CD.MethodsWith “Crohn’s disease” as the retrieval word, the literature about CD published from January 1978 to December 2017 were retrieved in the SinoMed database. The distributions of publication dates, journals, research institutions, and regions of literature were analyzed by EndNote, Excel, MySQL, and GraphPad Prism softwares.ResultsA total of 2 140 papers matched the searching criteria, including 1 391 papers published in the core journals. The number of papers increased by year, especially in the past 20 years, the growth rate of the total number of papers every 5 years was 96.67%, 202.54%, 85.15%, and 29.35%, respectively. A total of 152 papers met the criteria of evidence-based documents, and the proportion of evidence-based articles in the total papers every 5 years was 2.54%, 3.92%, 4.69%, and 12.16%, respectively. In the respect of region distribution of literature, the first addresses of 1 060 papers were in East China, accounting for 50.36% of the total number of papers. Jiangsu Province, Guangdong Province, Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, and Beijing had published a total of 1 257 papers, accounting for 59.71% of the total number of papers. In our research field, most of the studies were conducted by teaching hospitals.ConclusionsIn the past 40 years, the output of research on CD increased significantly in China. The proportion of evidence-based articles has increased, while the number of evidence-based research still needs to be improved. The regional distribution of literature was unbalanced, and teaching hospitals played a vital role in the research field.