Admission criteria for acute severe ulcerative colitis.
UCSeverityValidated criteria
Clinical indication
Identification of acute severe ulcerative colitis at presentation, triggering admission, intravenous corticosteroid and a defined rescue pathway.
What is scored
The calculator collects 5 items:
Severe Bloody Diarrhea
Core Body Temperature
Heart Rate / Pulse
Haemoglobin Level
Inflammatory Markers
Any item left blank stops the score being calculated — an incomplete form never reports as remission.
Limitations
Diagnostic criteria, not a graded severity score: the output is whether the threshold is met. C-reactive protein substituting for ESR is a later modification not present in the 1955 description. Criteria can be masked by recent corticosteroid, and a patient below threshold may still deteriorate, so they do not replace serial review.
References
Truelove SC, Witts LJ. Cortisone in ulcerative colitis; final report on a therapeutic trial. Br Med J 1955;2:1041-8. PMID 13260656. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.4947.1041
The severity criteria were defined inside this cortisone trial. C-reactive protein in place of ESR is a later modification, not part of the 1955 description.
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
Truelove and Witts Severity Criteria is implemented as an interactive calculator in IBD Care, with its full guidance and scoring bands.