Author: james sameul
Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), causes ulcers to form in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract anywhere from the mouth to the anus. Symptoms include stomach cramps and pain that comes and goes, diarrhea, and blood in your stool. Other symptoms include losing weight, feeling sick to your stomach, having joint pain and feeling tired.
Symptoms and Complications
The most common early symptoms of Crohn's disease are chronic diarrhea (which sometimes is bloody), crampy abdominal pain, fever, loss of appetite, and weight loss. Symptoms may continue for days or weeks and may resolve without treatment. Complete and permanent recovery after a single attack is extremely rare. Crohn's disease almost always flares up at irregular intervals throughout a person's life.
What happens in Crohn's disease?
Crohn's disease causes changes in the bowel wall, which can range from mild redness to a severe state in which all the layers of the bowel wall become inflamed and so become thickened, deeply ulcerated and deformed. Fistulas (abnormal openings connecting the bowel to the skin surface near the anus) can develop, and obstruction of the bowel can occur.
Treatment
The goal of medical treatment is to reduce the inflammation that triggers your signs and symptoms. In the best cases, this may lead not only to symptom relief but also to long-term remission. Treatment for Crohn's disease usually involves drug therapy or, in certain cases, surgery.
Crohn's disease is a chronic condition. This means that it lasts a long time, sometimes for the rest of the affected person's life.The term chronic refers to time, not to how serious a condition is. Crohn's disease is characterised by flare-ups of symptoms. These alternate with periods of no symptoms at all - this is called remission. Usually there is no obvious trigger for the symptoms coming back (a relapse). When you have symptoms, the disease is said to be active. Symptoms include:
· diarrhoea - it may contain blood, pus or mucus
· a painful and swollen abdomen (tummy)
· loss of appetite
· weight loss
· fever
Who gets Crohn's disease?
About 1 in 1500 people have Crohn's disease. It can develop at any age but most commonly starts between the ages of 15 and 40. It affects women slightly more often than men.
Diagnosis
The diagnosis is made by a combination of x-rays, endoscopy, colonoscopy and biopsies. Exclusion of infective causes of diarrhoea and bleeding is important and hence stool culture and examination may also be performed. A full blood count may also be done to see if the patient is anaemic because of low iron, folate or vitamin B12, plus to look for signs that an inflammatory process is occurring.
Crohn's Disease - Treatment Overview
Initial treatment
Your doctor will most likely start with the traditional first-line treatment for Crohn's disease. He or she will then add or change medicines if you are not getting better.
Mild symptoms may respond to an antidiarrheal medicine such as loperamide (Imodium A-D, for example), which slows or stops the
painful spasms in your intestines that cause symptoms.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/diseases-and-conditions-articles/crohns-disease-symptoms-and-complications-437998.html
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