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Crohn’s disease is a painful, often debilitating inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract that affects about 500,000 Americans. Although it can affect anyone, regardless of race or gender, it is most often diagnosed in white Americans between 15 and 30 years of age. It is a lifelong, recurring disease for which there are treatments but no known cause or cure. It is important to recognize the symptoms of Crohn’s disease so you can seek proper treatment and learn how to manage the condition as quickly as possible.
Symptoms of Crohn’s disease
Symptoms of Crohn’s disease include persistent or recurrent diarrhea (with or without rectal bleeding), abdominal pain and fever. Other important signs and symptoms are reddening and inflammation of the eyes, joint pain, skin lesions, sores inside the mouth, weight loss and poor appetite. The disease is marked by periods of remission and progression.
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How Crohn’s disease is diagnosed
Sometimes Crohn’s disease is diagnosed quickly; in some cases, it can take a long time to identify the condition, depending on the symptoms a person is experiencing when first seeing a doctor. Because many of these symptoms can be related to other problems, it can sometimes be difficult to initially diagnose a person with Crohn’s disease. Diagnosis involves a physical exam, lab tests and diagnostic procedures such as X-rays.
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Treating Crohn’s disease
There are ways to treat Crohn’s disease, including drug therapy (medical management) and surgery. The goal of medical management is to reduce the symptoms and begin a remission of the disease. There are many different medications that can be used to achieve this. These include 5-aminosalicylates, corticosteroids, immunosuppressives/immunomodulators and antibiotics. New drug therapies continue to be developed. (See Better Health magazine for an article on
infliximab, being used at the Hospital of Saint Raphael.)
Between two-thirds and three-quarters of all people who have Crohn’s disease eventually undergo surgery. This could be emergency surgery (in case of bleeding, total obstruction or another serious development). Surgery could be urgent, for example, in the case of a partial obstruction of the intestine. But often surgery is elective and is undertaken to clear a chronic partial obstruction of the small or large intestine, ileum or colon, or when medical management has failed to achieve the desired results.
The most common surgery for people with Crohn’s disease is partial intestinal resection with reanastomosis (reconnection). This means that a surgeon removes diseased bowel tissue or a portion of the damaged bowel, and then rejoins the remaining healthy bowel tissue.
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Finding a doctor
If you suspect that you suffer from Crohn’s disease, you should make an appointment to see a gastroenterologist (a physician who specializes in the treatment of diseases of the stomach and intestines).
To find a gastroenterologist in your area, visit our free, online physician referral service,
Need-A-Physician or call (203) 789-4304.
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This
page was last updated on 09/19/2001
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