Ulcerative colitis in China: retrospective analysis of 3100 hospitalized patients.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS This retrospective study analyzed the clinical characteristics of hospitalized patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) in China. METHODS A total of 3100 hospitalized patients with UC admitted to 23 hospitals in China from 1990 to 2003 were retrospectively investigated and their clinical characteristics were analyzed. RESULTS A male/female ratio of 1.34/1.00 was found in the 3100 patients, who had an average age of 44 +/- 15.1 years at diagnosis. Of the patients, 2972 (95.9%) had active UC. Active UC was mild in 35.4% of the 2972 patients, moderate in 42.9% and severe in 21.7%. Of the 2726 patients with a description of their lesion extent, 14.8% had proctitis, 26.4% had proctosigmoiditis, 25.0% had left-sided colitis, 6.3% had extensive colitis, 25.8% had pancolitis and 1.7% had regional colitis. The predominant complaints of the patients with UC were bloody diarrhea (48.2%), abdominal pain (67.3%) and mucus stools (58.4%). Among these patients, 13.6% had extraintestinal manifestations and 9.6% had related complications. A differential diagnosis was difficult to make, as there were 19 varieties of the disease; infectious enterocolitis had a misdiagnosis rate of 22.9% before admission. The main medications for UC in China were aminosalicylates (66.8%) and steroids (42.8%). Only 94 (3%) of the patients required colectomy and only 19 (0.6%) died of UC. CONCLUSIONS Compared with UC in Western countries, ulcerative colitis in China has some differences in clinical characteristics. Therefore, a further population-based epidemiological study is required to determine the prevalence and incidence rates of UC in China.