Regional Incidence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in a Czech Pediatric Population

ABSTRACT Objectives: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is today a global disease, the incidence of which is growing in the pediatric population. This prospective study aims to decipher IBD incidence and its trend in a pediatric population through 16 years in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Methods: We evaluated data concerning 358 pediatric patients with newly diagnosed IBD at University Hospital Brno, which is a gastroenterology center for the entire pediatric population (0–18 years) and cares for all pediatric IBD patients in the South Moravian Region (1,187,667 inhabitants). Results: The study encompassed 3,488,907 children during 16 years. We diagnosed 192 children (53.6%) with Crohn disease (CD), 123 (34.4%) with ulcerative colitis (UC), and 43 (12.0%) with IBD‐unclassified (IBD‐U). The incidence of IBD increased from 3.8 (CD 2.9, UC 0.9, and IBD‐U 0.0) per 100 000/year in 2002 to 14.7 (CD 9.8, UC 4.0, and IBD‐U 0.9) per 100,000/year in 2017 (P