Patient Understanding of "Flare" and "Remission" of Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Thirty-four respondents completed the survey, and nineteen others opened it but were excluded or incomplete, so the sample was small. Participants were recruited through social media and support-group websites and reported their own diagnosis, so selection bias and diagnostic accuracy are concerns. No information was collected on nonresponders, so the views of people who did not finish are unknown. The survey was anonymous, so participants could not be contacted to check the researchers' conclusions. The study did not involve clinicians, so it could not compare patient definitions with clinician definitions. Small qualitative samples are not statistically representative, even though they can describe themes richly.

This study had no external funding. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Do not read the symptom-focused themes as evidence that patients are nonadherent or that their self-care caused flares. The study described perceptions from an anonymous survey and did not measure disease activity, treatment outcomes, or compare clinician definitions.