Lichtiger Index (Ulcerative Colitis Activity)

Lichtiger Index (Modified Truelove-Witts Severity Index, Lichtiger 1994) for ulcerative colitis activity.

Open the calculator → Runs in your browser. Data leaves only if you deliberately send a problem report from the interactive tool.

Example

Daily stools
2
Nocturnal diarrhea
1
Visible blood in stool
2
Fecal incontinence
0
Abdominal pain
2
General wellbeing
3
Abdominal tenderness
1
Need for antidiarrheal drugs
1

Result: Lichtiger 12 of 21 — active (>= 10).

The tool opens with these values already filled in. Replace them with your own.

What the result means

Activity
advisory cutoffs from later trials (not the 1994 paper): < 10 = clinical response, >= 10 = active disease, <= 3 = remission.

What you enter

  • Daily stools: 0 (0-2), 1 (3-4), 2 (5-6), 3 (7-9), 4 (>=10)
  • Nocturnal diarrhea: 0 no, 1 yes
  • Visible blood in stool: 0 none, 1 <50%, 2 >=50%, 3 100%
  • Fecal incontinence: 0 no, 1 yes
  • Abdominal pain: 0 none, 1 mild, 2 moderate, 3 severe
  • General wellbeing: 0 perfect to 5 terrible
  • Abdominal tenderness: 0 none, 1 mild/localized, 2 mild-moderate/diffuse, 3 severe/rebound
  • Need for antidiarrheal drugs: 0 no, 1 yes
How this is calculated
Items
eight items summed 0-21: daily stools (0-4), nocturnal diarrhea (0-1), blood (0-3), incontinence (0-1), pain (0-3), wellbeing (0-5), tenderness (0-3), antidiarrheal use (0-1).

Lichtiger S, Present DH, Kornbluth A, et al. Cyclosporine in severe ulcerative colitis refractory to steroid therapy. N Engl J Med. 1994;330(26):1841-1845. Read the source ↗

A reference and educational tool. Not medical, legal, or financial advice, and not a substitute for clinician judgment.

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Built by Clay Good. Source on GitHub.