Disability in inflammatory bowel disease.

Disability can include different aspects of patient’s quality of life from physical to psychosocial to employment. Disability in IBD patients contributes to loss of workplace personnel, increased sick leave, and other indirect costs to society. Considerations for more expensive treatment regimens should include their potential to reduce indirect costs to the individual patients and to society in general. The recently developed tool could help establish specific criteria in a set of these diseases that have varied effects and severity.