Myocarditis in children with inflammatory bowel disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in children and adults is often associated with extracolonic manifestations in other organs, such as the joints, skin, and liver. Cardiac manifestations are considered to be very rare; in a recent survey of the literature we found only 23 cases, most of them in adults. Several extensive reviews and standard textbooks of IBD do not even mention perimyocarditis as a complication. During the past 10 years we have treated 106 patients with IBD in the Department of Pediatrics at St. Göran's Children's Hospital. Of these patients, two adolescent boys developed myocarditis as an extracolonic manifestation. In reporting these two cases, we wish to point out that cardiac involvement occurs in children and we also wish to show that the prognosis is usually good. Another interesting feature was that both of these boys developed myocarditis at a time when one of them had only minor gastrointestinal symptoms and the other had not yet been diagnosed as having IBD.