Treatment adaptations and outcomes of patients experiencing inflammatory bowel disease flares during the early COVID‐19 pandemic: the PREPARE‐IBD multicentre cohort study

Summary Background The COVID‐19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to understand inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) management during unexpected disruption. This could help to guide practice overall. Aims To compare prescribing behaviour for IBD flares and outcomes during the early pandemic with pre‐pandemic findings Methods We performed an observational cohort study comprising patients who contacted IBD teams for symptomatic flares between March and June 2020 in 60 National Health Service trusts in the United Kingdom. Data were compared with a pre‐pandemic cohort after propensity‐matching for age and physician global assessment of disease activity. Results We included 1864 patients in each of the pandemic and pre‐pandemic cohorts. The principal findings were reduced systemic corticosteroid prescription during the pandemic in Crohn's disease (prednisolone: pandemic 26.5% vs. 37.1%; p