Crohn's Disease - Symptoms, Cautions and Treatments Available

Crohn's Disease - Symptoms, Cautions and Treatments Available
Around 1,000,000 people all over the world suffer from Crohn's disease every year. Crohn's diease is one of the most irritating chronic diseases.

What is Crohn’s Disease?
Crohn’s disease is a painful and recurrent, chronic inflammatory bowel disease that affects Ileum (last part of the small bowel: ileitis and enteritis) and/or Colon structures in the intestinal tract. Crohn’s disease starts with small and burning ulcers that slowly lead to highly ulcerated walls of bowel. The walls of the bowel start thickening which results in narrowing of the bowel making it difficult for the bowel to perform its functions properly.

If not taken care in its early stages, this disease may spread to the other parts of bowel. The inflammation can grow and spread out in the areas like duodenum or stomach. It also can cause arthritis in the patient, some types of liver and kidney disease and also types of spondylitis (generally ankylosing spondylitis). As the disease is mainly characterized by inflammatory ulcers, it also can cause diseases of skins and all the openings of the body like eyes, anus and vagina etc.
Crohn’s disease can be classified in the following types:
Crohn’s ileitis
Crohn’s colitis also known as colonic Crohn’s disease
Ileocolic Crohn’s disease
Peri-anal Crohn’s disease
What causes Crohn’s Disease?
Although the origin of this disease is not known, many doctors relate this disease with the bacteria that grow in the gut may. Not all the bacteria help in growth of this disease, but few bacteria causing inflammation are thought to be among the main players. This disease is also thought to be hereditary as people in the same family are found to be suffering from this irritating disease.

Few studies also show that the Crohn’s disease is caused due to the internal problems of the body and our immune system also play an important role in inducing the inflammatory condition of the colon, intestines, small bowel etc.

People of all ages and sexes can develop Crohn’s disease. A study shows that the Crohn’s disease is basically widespread in people with fair complexion. Even when the disease does not differentiate between children, teens or old age people, it is evident that most of the patients of this disease are young generation people.

One of the most important factors that can cause Crohn’s disease or help in spread of the same is lack of nutritional diet intake and insufficient or improper diet routine.

What are the symptoms of Crohn’s Disease?
People who suffer from Crohn’s disease experience various symptoms like:
Severe and recurrent pain in the infected area of the intestinal tract and also in abdominal area.
Patient’s suffer from frequent attacks of diarrhea that contains blood
Patient can also experience fever
Due to the problems with intestinal track, patient’s digestive system also gets affected and they fail to digest the food. This situation leads to malnutrition of the patient.
Children who suffer from the Crohn’s disease may face a problem of slow physical growth as the digestive system is the main target of this disease and they also suffer from mental frustration because of the ruthless disease which needs the patient to be hospitalized often.
Patient’s also experience conditions like nausea, weakness and weight loss due to ongoing fatigue and drainage of energy in the body.
Patient’s also experience formulation of fistula (i.e. draining sinus tract) to various parts of body like skin, anal area and vaginal area etc. The fistula causes urinary infections in patient.
The worst experience of patient’s is of inflammation in the affected part of body.
In rare cases, the ulcers in the intestinal tract also bleed.
How Crohn’s disease is diagnosed?
Although there are many tests available, not even a single diagnostic test alone can confirm fully to the existence of Crohn’s disease, which makes it necessary for the doctors to rely on integrated results of several such tests.
As already mentioned above, it has been found that the disease exhibit hereditary linkage, your health and family history related information can surely help your doctor in coming to a conclusion. Your doctor may conduct a blood test in order to check various blood related problems such as anemia, deficiency of various important vitamins and minerals in blood due to the loss caused by Crohn’s disease, direct visualization of the colon, and terminal ileum from the intestinal tract (this test involves samples of tissues from the affected area for biopsy), CT Scan (which is used to understand the overall condition and the complications that may occur due to the spread of disease from infected area to the surrounding area), Barium-Follow Through test (which is carried out in order to compliment the colonoscopy tests by allowing visualization of small intestinal area) and MRI scan. Your doctor may also decide to take help of advanced technology in order to insert a capsule shaped micro device with a camera in your intestine in order to capture real time images of your gastrointestinal tract.

Along with the various diagnosis tests mentioned above, there are several other tests available which help in confirming the disease.

What treatment options are available for Crohn’s disease?
Crohn’s disease is a very painful yet curable disease that requires patient to pay 100% attention towards his/her health and understand the importance of healthy and proper diet. After studying your condition, your doctor might suggest you treatments such as medications (anti-inflammatory drugs, Immune System Suppressers, steroids, antibiotics etc.), surgery (which involves surgery on the infected areas) etc.

As already mentioned above, it is very important that patient should take care of his/her health, follow nutritional diet and avoid any irregular habits that trigger problems like Crohn’s disease.
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source:wikipedia