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Home | Articles | Gastrointestinal |
Crohn’s Disease
Last updated 10th October 2024
Contact [email protected] if inpatient advice required from Gastroenterology Team.
Clinical Features
- Whereas UC invariably presents with bloody diarrhoea, abdominal pain diarrhoea and weight loss are more likely in Crohn’s disease.
- Systemic symptoms such as malaise, anorexia and low grade fever, multiple joint pain & skin rash are more common in Crohn’s disease
- May present as acute RIF pain mimicking appendicitis
- Anal and perianal disease are the presenting feature in 25% cases.
- Enteric fistulae to bladder, vagina or abdominal wall will eventually occur in up to 40% cases
General Principles of Treatment
- More complex than ulcerative colitis
- Decision on treatment will depend on:
- site: ileal, ileocolic, colonic, other
- pattern of disease: inflammatory, stricturing, fistulating
- activity: assessed by inflammatory markers, imaging
- the exclusion of alternative explanations for symptoms eg infection, abscess formation, bacterial overgrowth, dysmotility, gallstones
Active Ileal, Ileocolonic or Colonic Crohn’s
- Severly active Crohn’s disease should be treated with Methyl Prednisolone 30mg bd IV or hydrocortisone 100mg qds IV
- Moderately active ileal or ileocolonic disease – Budesonide 9mg daily is recommended. Colonic Crohn’s benefit from reducing dose of Prednisolone
- Failure to wean from steroids is common and should be regarded as a treatment failure requiring further intervention
- Severe active disease or Crohn’s refractory to IV steroid – antiTNF therapy with Infliximab may be used to induce remission
Maintenance of Remission
- Stopping smoking is associated with a 65% reduction in risk of relapse, which is same order of magnitude as that seen with immunosuppressive therapy – intriguingly stopping smoking does not have same effect on course of ulceratve colitis
- Azathioprine, Mercaptopurine, Methotrexate, Infliximab, Adalimumab, Stelara, Vedolizumab have all been shown to maintain remissions in Crohn’s disease – for details see the BSG Guideline
Surgery for Crohn’s Disease
- Lifetime risk of surgery for Crohn’s may be as high as 70-80%
- Surgery is a good therapeutic option when medical therapy fails in presence of limited ileocolonic disease
- Preservation of bowel length is critically important in more extensive disease
- Surgery never curative in Crohn’s disease, unlike ulcerative colitis
Risk of Colonic Carcinoma
- Patients with Crohn’s colitis involving at least 50% of surface area of colon are at risk
- Surveillance colonoscopies recommended yearly, 3 yearly or 5 yearly according to degree of risk – increased if family history colon cancer or presence of primary sclerosing cholangitis
Links
- BSG Guidelines for Management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Adults. Gut 2011;60:571-607 [pdf]
- NICE Guideline CG129. Crohn’s Disease Management
Content updated by Dr Zahra Bayaty