Swedish Study Challenges Findings on Early Surgery for CrohnS Disease
SOLNA, SWEDEN – A new Swedish study is casting doubt on recent research suggesting early surgery is superior too medication for managing Crohn’s disease. researchers at Karolinska Institutet found that differences in study design between a Danish study and their own replication effort make direct comparison unfeasible, and that teh benefits of early operation remain unproven.
“It’s a comparison of apples and pears,” said Ola Olén,a professor at the Department of Medicine Solna,Karolinska institutet,and lead author of the study.
The Swedish team replicated aspects of a Danish study examining early ileocecal resection versus tumor necrosis factor inhibitors in Crohn’s disease patients.However, they discovered that design choices made by the Danish researchers compromised the comparability of the two groups. When the Swedish researchers adopted the same definitions used in the Danish study, they achieved similar results. But when they implemented stricter definitions – more closely mirroring the original study’s parameters – they found no significant difference between the two treatment approaches.
“We claim that one cannot interpret the Danes’ work as a receipt that early operation is better,” Olén stated. “It may well be so,but the data we have simply cannot answer that question at present.”
The research, conducted in collaboration with researchers from Linköping University and the University of Copenhagen, was funded by the Swedish Research Council and ALF funds from the Stockholm Region. No conflicts of interest were reported.
The study, titled “Early ileocecal resection or tumor necrosis factor inhibitor in Crohn’s disease: Replication in a Swedish cohort,” was published online September 11, 2025, in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (doi: 10.1016/j.cgh.2025.07.046).
