Graded histological assessment of inflammation in ulcerative colitis across six grades from structural change through to erosion and ulceration.
What is scored
The calculator collects 7 items:
Grade 0: Architectural (structural) change
Grade 1: Chronic inflammatory infiltrate
Grade 2A: Eosinophils in lamina propria
Grade 2B: Neutrophils in lamina propria
Grade 3: Neutrophils in epithelium
Grade 4: Crypt destruction
Grade 5: Erosion or ulceration
Any item left blank stops the score being calculated — an incomplete form never reports as remission.
Interpretation
grade 0, 1 or 2A
Histological remission (no neutrophils)
grade 2B
Mild (neutrophils in lamina propria)
grade 3
Moderate (neutrophils in epithelium)
grade 4 - 5
Severe (crypt destruction, erosion or ulcer)
Bands as implemented in IBD Care. A band is a description of the score, not an instruction.
Limitations
Complex, with subgrades that reduce reproducibility in routine practice; the original paper reported that agreement was unusable until a pictorial scale was added. The grade is ordinal and not a linear scale, so arithmetic on it is not meaningful. Later indices were developed specifically to address these properties.
References
Geboes K, Riddell R, Ost A, Jensfelt B, Persson T, Lofberg R. A reproducible grading scale for histological assessment of inflammation in ulcerative colitis. Gut 2000;47:404-9. PMID 10940279. doi:10.1136/gut.47.3.404
Content last reviewed 2026-10-10. References were resolved against PubMed, a service of the US National Library of Medicine, which does not endorse this site.
Use the calculator
Geboes Score is implemented as an interactive calculator in IBD Care, with its full guidance and scoring bands.