Postoperative plexitis after ileocolic resection

What is known

• Plexitis is reported as two entities by location, myenteric (Auerbach) and submucosal (Meissner/submucosal) plexitis, scored separately in resection specimens. ^1,2
• It is evaluated at the proximal (ileal) and colonic resection margins as a histopathological marker, with myenteric plexitis at the proximal margin specifically studied. ^1,2
• Plexitis at the margin is used as a predictor of postoperative endoscopic, clinical, and surgical recurrence after ileocolic resection. ^1,3

What is unknown / caveats

• Retrieved chunks are mostly reference lists and result tables. They name and locate plexitis but do not give a single explicit quantitative grading/cell-count definition
• No standardized definition across studies. The corpus notes inter/intraobserver variability and varying definitions of margin inflammation
• The excerpts confirm the concept and its myenteric/submucosal subtypes but do not provide a uniform cell-count or grading threshold defining a positive plexitis.

References

1. [No authors listed]. Association Between Microscopic Lesions at Ileal Resection Margin and Recurrence After Surgery in Patients With Crohn's Disease. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2020;18(1):141-149.e2. PMID: 31042575.

2. Bak MTJ, Oudijk L, Ooms AHAG, Beelen EMJ, van der Bilt JDW, Romberg-Camps M, Dijkstra G, Duijvestein M, van der Marel S, Stassen LPS, Maljaars PWJ, Buskens CJ, Lange JFM, Kats-Ugurlu G, Jansen SV, Jharap BJH, Horjus CS, van Schaik FDM, West RL, de Boer NKH, Janneke van der Woude C, Parikh K, van Ruler O, Doukas M, de Vries AC, RAP-CD study group; on behalf of the Dutch Initiative on Crohn and Colitis (ICC) & Dutch Initiative on Crohn and Colitis – Surgery (ICC-S). Combined Clinical and Histopathological Risk Stratification for Prediction of (severe) Endoscopic Postoperative Recurrence in Patients with Crohn's Disease after Ileocolic Resection: Results from A Prospective Multicenter Cohort Study. Ann Surg. 2025. PMID: 40334060.

3. Sokol H, Polin V, Lavergne-Slove A, Panis Y, Treton X, Dray X, Bouhnik Y, Valleur P, Marteau P. Plexitis as a predictive factor of early postoperative clinical recurrence in Crohn's disease. Gut. 2009;58(9):1218-25. PMID: 19625280.

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Draft, generated by the IBDology RAG and not yet clinician-reviewed. Answers are grounded in the retrieved literature listed above; a high faithfulness score means the answer matches its sources, not that the sources are correct.