Today’s guest is Dr Luca Scarallo, one of the rising stars in the constellation of experts in inflammatory bowel disease.

Dr Scarallo – I’m tempted to call him simply “Luca,” as he was born in 1993, which makes him impossibly young – comes from Benevento, lying east and south of Naples. That city, his birthplace, has a history as impossibly long as Luca is impossibly young. It flourished under the Roman Republic and Empire, was the southern capital of the German Longbeards, the Longobardi, who ruled much of Italy fifteen hundred years ago, and belonged to the papacy for almost a millennium, till the creation of the Italian state in 1860.

Unimaginable for me, whose family and native country have practically no history at all…

At any rate, in flight from the weight of this enormous past, he went from the frying pan into two successive history-laden fires:

• To Milan for medical education, and

• To Florence for specialty training.

There, he now attends children with gastrointestinal disease, having spent a year away from Florence at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto—a refreshingly history-poor city—as an investigator.

Whilst his research interests centre on diet in inflammatory bowel disease, his chosen emphasis for this podcast interview is the use of sonography to assess the inflamed bowel – references to work in this area are supplied below.

As you listen, ask yourselves these questions, please:

• How do you use intestinal ultrasound in your daily practice?

• Has the introduction of intestinal ultrasound in investigation and diagnosis changed your practice?

• Can you imagine using intestinal ultrasound more extensively in the care of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases?

Literature

• Scarallo L et al. Bowel ultrasound scan predicts corticosteroid failure in children with acute severe colitis.J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr 2020 Jul; 71(1):46-51.Doi: 10.1097/MPG.0000000000002677. PMID: 32102087

• Kellar A et al. Intestinal ultrasound for the pediatric gastroenterologist: A guide for inflammatory bowel disease monitoring in children.Expert consensus on behalf of the International Bowel Ultrasound Group (IBUS) pediatric committee.J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr 2023 Feb 1; 76(2):142-148.Doi: 10.1097/MPG.0000000000003649. PMID: 36306530. PMCID: PMC9848217

• Chavannes M et al. Bedside intestinal ultrasound predicts disease severity and the disease distribution of pediatric patients with inflammatory bowel disease: A pilot cross-sectional study.Inflamm Bowel Dis 2024 Mar 1; 30(3):402-409.Doi: 10.1093/ibd/izad083. PMID: 37229656. PMCID: PMC10906360

  Dr. Scarallo´s favourite song: Caruso - Lucio Dalla

  ESPGHAN favourite Songs can be found on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0YIHKjxITLEm9XNyHyypTo