Increasing rates of hospitalization among patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)including Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) have been documented. To elucidate in-hospital mortality of IBD patients due to lack of information, we aimed to establish the in-hospital cause of death for IBD in Shiraz from 2012 to 2018.

The settings of this cross sectional study was the two Shiraz’ university affiliated referral hospitals of IBD patients. Shiraz is the center of Fars province in south east of Iran. The Records of administrative inpatient and mortality data of IBD hospitalized patient for ≥ 1 day during 2012 to 2018 were reviewed. The main outcome measure was in-hospital mortality. Significant P value was set 0.05.

Out of the 438 admitted IBD patients, 14 (3%) died during 7 years (2 CD and 12 UC patients). Overall in-hospital Mortality was 0.4% for CD, and 2.7% for UC. Mean age of deceased IBD patients was 50.8 ± 23 and was not significantly higher than alive IBD patients (P value 0.22) and 9 (64.3%) patients were female. Both CD patients died due to pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE). Causes of death for 2 UC patients were stroke and sinus venous thrombosis, 5 of UC patients died due to PTE, 5 died due to sepsis and one due to multi-organ failure. No death was occurred in last two years of study.

Most of IBD patients in this setting died due to TE events. Compared other study, deceased IBD patients were younger. Clinicians’ alertness of the risk of TE events in IBD patients, and their ability to prompt detection and manage thromboembolic complications are of utmost significance. Further population based cohort studies for assessment of standard mortality rate of IBD patients as well as factors affect on investment in decreased in-hospital IBD mortality rate is also recommended.