Inflammatory bowel disease in patients over the age of 70y. Does the disease duration influence its behavior?

Introduction: The fastest growing segment of our population is that of people above 70 years of age. Elderly patients with IBD exhibit several specific problems. Our objective was to evaluate the clinical course, the side effects of the treatments and the need for surgery of elderly patients, regardless of the age of onset.Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study wherein retrospective data were collected from multiple centers from seven hospitals within the Valencia metropolitan area. Data were collected on patients older than 70y with inflammatory bowel disease.Results: We identified a total of 331 patients older than 70 years of age (5.3% of patients monitored at our center…