Assessment of Endoscopic Disease Activity in Ulcerative Colitis: Is Simplicity the Ultimate Sophistication?

Background: Endoscopic remission is an increasingly recognized important therapeutic endpoint in the management of patients with UC. Summary: The Mayo Endoscopic Score (MES) remains the most common endoscopic index recommended in guidelines and widely used in clinical trials and in clinical practice. The MES is easy, simple, and practical but is suboptimal at providing an accurate depiction of segmental healing and/or at measuring a substantial but incomplete response across the spectrum of endoscopic inflammation. Other endoscopic scores have been proposed but have not received wide recognition or adoption.