Pouchology.org
What is Pouchology?
Pouchology is a bibliometrically curated knowledge base of 14,211 peer-reviewed publications on the ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA, or “J-pouch”), including continent ileostomies, with 10,642 with full-text extractions.
The corpus includes 5,252 core pouch papers, 6,677 pouch-adjacent surgery articles, and 2,282 pouch-related articles — assembled through systematic PubMed search, 13-round citation snowball analysis, and validated by automated text classification.
This collection spans nearly 48 years (1978–2026, incl. precursor work back to 1898) with 100% PubMed identifier coverage.
Papers are indexed by first author, year, PMID, and searchable abstract and full text.
What is the Continent Ileostomy Collection?
A bibliometrically curated collection of 393 peer-reviewed publications on the continent ileostomy — including the Kock pouch, Barnett continent intestinal reservoir (BCIR), nipple valve surgery, and conversion to and from IPAA. Built from PubMed and validated through NIH iCite citation-tree analysis and automated text classification.
This collection spans from Nils Kock’s pioneering work in 1969 through modern valve-revision and pouch-conversion techniques. Comparison papers (IPAA vs CI) appear in both the IPAA and Continent Ileostomy collections.
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Contact
Interested in collaborating, learning more about Pouchology, or have a question? We'd love to hear from you.
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Why Pouchology?
Ileal pouch–anal anastomosis (IPAA) is the most complex reconstructive procedure in gastrointestinal surgery. The published literature spans over five decades, thousands of papers, and dozens of subspecialty topics—from pouchitis and fistula management to fertility, robotic technique, and long-term quality of life.
Yet this knowledge is scattered across journals, hard to search, and often inaccessible to the clinicians and patients who need it most.
Pouchology was created to solve this problem. It is a bibliometrically curated knowledge base of over 10,800 peer-reviewed publications on the ileal pouch, built from PubMed and validated through NIH iCite citation-tree analysis. Every paper is indexed by topic, author, year, and PMID, classified by study type, and searchable across abstracts and full text.
The topic summaries and evidence overviews you see on this site were generated by artificial intelligence to help users quickly orient to each area of pouch literature. They are not a substitute for reading the primary sources—they are a starting point.
Pouchology is a project of the iPouch Consortium, an international quality improvement initiative dedicated to advancing the care of pouch patients worldwide.
About the Founder
Stefan D. Holubar, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS
Stefan Holubar brings a unique perspective to pouch surgery: he is both a fellowship-trained colorectal surgeon specializing in ileal pouch procedures and himself a pouch patient. This dual lived experience—from both sides of the operating table—drives his commitment to ensuring that every patient who needs a pouch receives the highest quality of care. He is also a clinician-informatician who designed and built Pouchology—including its AI-powered search—himself.
Dr. Holubar is co-PI of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation IBD-SIRCQ, co-PI of the ACS-NSQIP IBD Collaborative (26 sites nationally), founder of the iPouch Consortium, and has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications, the majority focused on IBD surgical outcomes.
Co-Investigator
Kevin Chen, MD
Kevin Chen is a multimodal AI expert and Co-Investigator on Pouchology.org, bringing expertise in retrieval-augmented generation, natural language processing, and clinical decision support systems to the development of PouchRAG.
This site was created for healthcare providers.
Please visit our patient site for reliable pouch information written in plain language.
Visit Pouchy.org →Frequently Asked Questions
Concise, evidence-oriented answers for clinicians. The research base for each is in the collection above.
What is a staged IPAA — 2-stage vs 3-stage?
Restorative proctocolectomy with IPAA is commonly staged to reduce anastomotic leak and pelvic sepsis. A 2-stage approach performs proctocolectomy with pouch construction and a diverting loop ileostomy, followed later by ileostomy closure. A 3-stage approach begins with subtotal colectomy and end ileostomy — favored in the acutely ill, malnourished, or high-dose-corticosteroid patient — followed by completion proctectomy with pouch construction, then ileostomy closure. Stage selection balances nutritional status, immunosuppression, urgency, and pelvic exposure. Patient-facing explanations are at pouchy.org.
Interactive 3D citation galaxy — 69,950 PubMedBERT vectors. Click any node to explore.
Annual Publication Output
h-Index by Decade
Citation Distribution
Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) Distribution
Top 30 Most-Cited Papers
| # | Title | First Author | Year | Journal | Citations | RCR |
|---|
Top 30 Authors by Total Citations
Top Institutions by Paper Count
Annual Publications (1950 – 2026)
Cumulative Growth
Emerging Topics (steepest recent growth)
Declining Topics (falling output)
Topic Time-Series (1978 – 2026)
Top 40 Journals by IPAA Paper Count
| Rank | Journal | Papers | Full Text | OA Rate | Total Cites | Avg Cites | Median RCR | SJR | Quartile |
|---|
Top 20 Journals — Paper Volume
My Library
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Click Save on any article in the IPAA Collection to add it to your personal library.
Full library features launching Q3 2026. Registration required.