CROHN’S DISEASE – GENERAL INFORMATION
The most common symptoms are abdominal pain and diarrhoea and the diagnosis may be missed and thought to be either an episode of mild appendicitis or the irritable-bowel syndrome.
Sometime ulcerative colitis may be suspected, if Crohn’s disease affects the large bowel. At times there is a fever and weight loss.
When the rectum and anus are affected there may be localised pain, bleeding and sometimes a fistula or track leading from the bowel and opening out on to the skin around the anus.
Involvement of large areas of the small bowel may lead to poor absorption of food, anaemia, vitamin deficiencies and malnutrition.
Treatment is not altogether satisfactory, as this is often so in diseases where the exact cause is not always known. Cortisone or its derivatives are often used as in any chronic inflammatory disorder.
One of the antibacterial sulpha drugs can be of value in acute flare-ups, but is of little use in long term maintenance.
It may be necessary to operate and remove the affected segment of the bowel when medical treatment fails.
Most patients can be kept in reasonable health and can live full and active lives.
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