Medical Journal of The Islamic Republic of Iran (MJIRI)

Background: Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract that is characterized by recurrent attacks and frequent recovery. The lifelong course of this disease requires frequent assessment of the disease activity. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness and safety of computed tomography enterography (CTE) to magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) in adults with CD. 
   Methods: A systematic review of the literatures was performed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of CTE in comparison with MRE.  PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase were searched. Effectiveness outcomes included were sensitivity, specificity, diagnosis difference, diagnostic odds ratio, and positive and negative likelihood. Quality assessment of the studies was conducted using the QADAS score. Meta-analysis was done by RevMan 5.3 for selected outcomes.
   Results: Five studies had eligibility for analyzing effectiveness. The meta-analysis results showed that diagnosis difference of MRE and CTE, for diagnosing active CD (0.03 CI 95% -0.07–0.13), fistula (-0.01 CI 95% -0.09–0.07), and cramping (-0.02 CI 95% -0.1–0.06) were not statistically significant. Six studies were finally selected for safety assessment. The results showed that people who are examined with CTE frequently are at increased risk of developing cancer significantly, as they receive more than 50 msv of radiation per year.
   Conclusion: There was no significant difference between MRE and CTE in diagnosis of Crohn’s activity, detection of bowel obstruction, and detection of fistula and stenosis of the alimentary canal. However, the assessment of the safety profile of MRE and CTE showed that MRE is meaningfully safer than CTE for evaluating the recurrence of CD.