Guidance
This guideline covers the care and treatment of adults, children and young people who have ulcerative colitis (UC). It aims to help professionals to provide consistent high-quality care and it highlights the importance of advice and support for people with ulcerative colitis.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- information and support
- inducing remission
- information about treatment options for people considering surgery
- maintaining remission
- pregnant women
- monitoring treatment
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Adults, young people and children with ulcerative colitis and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We checked this guideline in June 2017 and plan an update. The update will focus on:
- medicines used to induce remission in people with mild-to-moderate ulcerative colitis
- treating acute severe ulcerative colitis.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called ulcerative colitis: management in adults, children and young people.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.