It Is A Mighty Challenge To Diagnose Crohn’s Disease

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Monday, October 29th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

by Tammy Foster

This disease is often one crafty and wicked little bugger! Diagnosing Crohn’s Disease can be a tough one to make since it acts like so many other gastrointestinal (GI) diagnosis. All too often, patients suffering with Crohn’s are misdiagnosed with other GI ailments multiple times before the true culprit is discovered.

A battle of the wills… who is going figure it out first…the symptoms of Crohn’s disease vary from person to person and naturally that does not make diagnosing it any easier.

There is not one absolute test that your health care provider can use in diagnosing Crohn’s disease definitively and so diagnosing Crohn’s disease becomes a bit of a puzzle.

So you think you have Crohn’s disease? First thing is to get yourself to the doctor! One of the very first tests that your doctor will probably elect to perform is a simple test of your stool sample. It is a cheap and and easy to perform test. Your physician can take a look at your stool sample and determine whether the bowel issues you are experiencing are because you have a raging gut infection or if instead you are experiencing an inflammatory response in your bowel. Either way, this simple test can tell your health care provider a lot about your GI tract.

Inflammation is one of the hallmark signs of Crohn’s. With this disease, your GI tract acts as if your body is fighting an infection but in fact, there is no actual infection present. Again, a simple stool sample can tell your doc a lot about your gut.

Well, once your physician has had a good look at your poop and has had a chance to see if it is infection or inflammation hiding within, the next thing on the “tests” to do is typically several other standardized tests. Some of those tests may include drawing blood to assess your complete blood count to check for signs of anemia due to blood loss and for signs of infection, a CT scan of your belly, or even a colonoscopy, a flexible sigmoidoscopy and perhaps a barium enema. Some physicians may also elect to have you get a small bowel x-ray series and even a capsule endoscopy.

Once your test results come back, your health care provider will review them thoroughly before discussing them with you. One of the key things to remember is that if your additional blood work indicates that an infection is present then it is less likely that you have Crohn’s disease. However, if your blood work shows that anemia is present, then Crohn’s disease is more of a possibility.

So don’t give your doctor a hard time if she is struggling a bit to figure out what is going on with you. Getting this diagnosis right, isn’t easy. It is a bit like a big puzzle that has to be put together one piece at a time.

Crohn’s disease symptoms can be a bit tricky and yet one of the commonly seen symptoms is bloody diarrhea or rectal bleeding. This bleeding is what can lead to abnormal lab work that beings to paint a picture of anemia because of the blood loss. These two pieces of information are important in getting the diagnosis right. So don’t be embarrassed if you are experiencing rectal bleeding. For goodness sakes, tell the truth!

A colonoscopy may be helpful in getting to the bottom of your symptoms. Generally performed by a gastroenterologist, a colonoscopy can only be performed after you have completed a rigorous bowel prep so that your colon is thoroughly clean out. If there is still stool in the colon then your physician cannot see your colon. Make sense? So once you’ve completed the bowel prep, after mild sedation your physician will insert a flexible lighted tube that has a tiny camera attached to it through your rectum and into your colon. With the lighted tube and tiny camera your physician can see the colon and can assess for the presence of Crohn’s disease.

It is important to remember with any medical procedure and there are risks associated with it. Risk associated with a colonoscopy include G.I. bleeding and perforation of the colon wall.

It is also wise to remember that Crohn’s disease may only be evident in the small intestine and not the colon and so in this case a colonoscopy would be completely and totally ineffective in diagnosing Crohn’s disease.

Another medical exam that your physician may order is a flexible sigmoidoscopy. This exam, similar to the colonoscopy, occurs when your physician inserts a long tube into the rectum; however, this tube does not contain a camera. Your physician would use the lighted tube to look at the inside of the last 2 feet of the colon to see if there are any signs of Crohn’s disease so that a definitive diagnosis could be made. The downfall of the flexible sigmoidoscopy is that it only looks at the last 2 feet of the colon and so if the evidence of Crohn’s disease is located higher up in the colon then this exam is useless.

Well, it should be pretty clear by now that trying to definitely figure out if Crohn’s disease is the culprit or not, is a bit like trying to discover the eye of the needle in a big ole haystack. So don’t get irritated and rush your physician! Give ‘em a chance to thoroughly figure it out before rushing to judgment.

Here’s the deal. Crohn’s disease is a tough diagnosis to nail down and yet with a dedicated and patient-focused physician, together you can decipher what is really bugging you. Inflammed gut, infected gut, either way, your physician can help you gain control of your GI health.

About the Author:

For more important information on stomach pain visit a-stomach-pain.com There’s information on stomach pain causes such as Crohn’s disease and other articles at www.a-stomach-pain.com You can get a unique content version of this article.

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