[The advantages of patient's active involvement in the management of chronic Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.]

The patient's active involvement is an emerging hot-topic, which can be applied in to the management of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Since in this field most of the therapeutic strategies are not based on sturdy scientific evidences, the patient's role has become central and it is believed essential for any patients to have an active cognitive, behavioural and emotive profile. Moreover different patient's aspects should be considered, such as the patient's activation, the patient's engagement and the patient's disease knowledge. The initial evidences available on this topic within IBD context have showed how a higher patient's active profile and a deeper disease knowledge have had a positive effect on compliance, perceived health-care satisfaction, self-management and health costs. Therefore, considering the favourable outcomes so far highlighted, we hope that the evaluation of patient's involvement may become a standard procedure, allowing patients who need it to undergo active programmes which have proved to be effective in improving patient's degree of activation.