The Editorial Board of VHJOE is very excited to have Bret A. Lashner, MD, join the journal as Guest Editor, Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Dr. Lashner is one of the leaders in the field of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and possesses a wealth of clinical and research experience with these disorders. This brief Biographical Sketch will serve as our introduction of Dr. Lashner, to you, the readers of VHJOE.

Dr. Lashner is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease at the Cleveland Clinic. He is a graduate of Haverford College and New York University School of Medicine, and completed a residency in internal medicine at Temple University Hospital, a fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of Chicago, and a Masters degree in Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After 7 years on the faculty of the University of Chicago involved with a busy clinical practice and IBD clinical research Dr. Lashner joined the Cleveland Clinic in 1993.

Dr. Lashner has conducted numerous clinical studies in IBD on such topics as cancer prevention with folic acid, optimization of cancer surveillance techniques, risk factors for malignancy, IBD risk in families, and epidemiologic determinants of disease. Dr. Lashner is an Associate Editor of The American Journal of Gastroenterology and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. He is the Department of Gastroenterology Fellowship Program Director and the Co-chair of the Cleveland Clinic General Clinical Research Center Advisory Committee. He is serving on the grant review committee of the American College of Gastroenterology and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.

Peter R. McNally, DO, FACP, FACG
Editorial Board, VHJOE
UCHSC, Center for Human Simulation

Comments from the Editor of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Dr. Lashner.

There are exciting recent advances in our understanding of inflammatory bowel diseases that we would like to present to you over the coming 12 months in VJHOE.

Ahmed Kandiel, M.D. has been asked to review cancer surveillance strategies in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. He will include his work with chromoendoscopy, narrow band imaging, and autofluorescence that may directly impact on your practice.

Jean-Paul Achkar, M.D. has been invited to review tricks in the use of biologic therapies in Crohn's disease. How to select among the 3 available biologic agents (infliximab, adalimumab, and natalizumab), how to avoid complications, and how to maximize effectiveness should be of interest.

Jeffry Katz, M.D. has been asked to comment on the use of probiotics and other complementary and alternative medical therapies that are being use more and more often in our patients.

For the last review in this series, Aaron Brzezinski, M.D. has been asked to review the extraintestinal manifestations of inflammatory bowel disease, and how to recognize and treat them.

In all, information from this series should be of great interest, and should directly impact on your clinical care of inflammatory bowel disease patients.