How IBD is Treated

Inflammatory bowel disease is a condition that needs to be managed to help with symptoms. 

There is no cure at the present moment, but there are good options for treatment, which include medications, changes to lifestyle, and surgery. 

Treatment also usually falls into two categories of IBD, Chron’s disease and UC. If you have what’s called indeterminate colitis, they may give you different treatments. 

The Prescription Treatments 

There are drugs that are used to be treated for IBD. 

The goal of these drugs is to help control the flare-ups, and also to keep the condition in remission so you don’t experience further flare-ups. 

Some drugs that are out there do involve 5-ASA drugs. Antibiotics, biologics, and corticosteroids. 

Usually, you can talk to your doctor about this. 

OTC therapies 

Over the counter treatments are also used. 

First, you’ve got fiber supplements, which is used for chronic moderate and mild diarrhea, and usually, this is Metamucil, or Citrucel, to help make the stool firmer. 

There are also anti-diarrheal medications, including Imodium A-D and others. 

If there is pain in your intestines and stomach, you may take OTC pain relievers to help with this, or even NSAIDs that can help with this condition. 

Another thing is iron, since intestinal bleeding does cause anemia, and you may need to take an iron supplement. Talk to the practitioner, and try to find liquid iron options, since this is non-binding to the intestines as well. 

And finally, IBD treated by steroids does need to have a calcium and vitamin D supplement.  Corticosteroids for Crohn’s disease does increase the risk for osteoporosis in women, and supplements will improve the bone density as well. 

Talk to your doctor before you take these in order to treat IBD in yourself. 

Lifestyle 

There are lifestyle changes that you can do too, which is basically your diet. 

You may need to eat a low residue diet for those who have structures in bowels or stenosis, since this can prevent intestinal blockage. 

You also may need to have a special diet through enteral nutrition, or interveinal nutrition. 

The feeding tube may be surgically placed or through the nose for a bit, and then after it’s placed, you can then just have this fed through a tube at home. 

There is also parenteral nutrition which is a liquid formula that you get through an IV, where it passes through the GI tract, and then goes into the bloodstream, where a catheter is placed on the vein by the heart, and then, you’re given nutrients. 

Surgeries 

Finally, there are surgeries that you can get if the medication is not working, or if there are complications for the condition. 

Crohn’s disease and UC are treated in different ways since this does affect the digestive tract differently. It eventually depends on the type of disease, the location, and how this is spread. 

It’s not a cure, and it may cause inflammation down the line. 

There are ostomies you can get, which is where they redirect the bowels out and away from the impacted area, but also a resection which is where they remove part of the inflamed area, and then he healthy tissue is then put together. 

They may even do a structureplasty, which is where scar tissue increases, and then, they usually remove the bad structure, and they open this up again. 

And of course, there is also a proctocolectomy, which ix what people get where they remove the large intestine, and then the connect the small intestine to the anus, to prevent needing a stoma in most typical cases. 

How likely is Crohn’s disease after a J Pouch

People who have IBD sometimes get treatment with J pouch surgery, where they have their colon partially or fully removed, and replaced with a pouch that’s attached to the anus. 

J pouch surgery is normally done for those with UC who struggle with this, but usually, it isn’t done for Crohn’s in particular.  That’s because they use the ileum for this, and it might become inflamed, to the point of pouch failure, and you might need an ileostomy to fix this, impacting your life quality. 

When Chron’s Gets Found 

In a few instances, those who are dealing with ulcerative colitis eventually are found to have Crohn’s, and usually, it can happen after they get a J pouch., albeit not common. The patients with Crohn’s disease may deal with this from the onset, even though tis was not part of your original diagnosis. Part of this because Crohn’s disease usually affects your large intestine, and the diagnosis may change over time. 

How common is Diagnosis? 

Because there are multiple surgeries for J pouches, there is always that concern of Crohn’s disease in a lot of cases. But it actually can be as low as about 1% to as high as about 13% in some cases, and usually, this isn’t as high as others expect it to be. Most of them is about 10% or lower in a lot of cases. Right now, the percentage is near 5%, but that’s because they can diagnose this before the IBD surgery in order to make sure that you get found. 

Is there a Way to Predict it? 

You may wonder if there is a way to predict it. Right now, there isn’t at the moment, but there is one study that shows patients who had ulcerative colitis at a younger age may have complications and have a Crohn’s disease diagnosis later on down the line, usually after they have a J pouch surgery. 

For young patients, it is actually more common to have “pouch failure” and eventually getting it removed, especially if there is a Crohn’s disease diagnosis later on. However, those who can have their pouch still will find that it does function well, and there is a difference in your quality of life between those who dealt with the surgery and those with ulcerative colitis still. 

So at the end of the day, it is something that could happen, but if your doctor takes care of the problem and gives the proper prognosis later on, you’ll be able to make sure that the IBD does improve over time, and usually, with the way surgeries are done, unless you’re young or have complications from surgery, you probably don’t have to worry about this. 

But that doesn’t’ mean you shouldn’t talk to the gastroenterologist, or your colorectal surgeon before this is completed, since it is important especially those who are young and have these kinds of complications. Usually, patients ask the surgeons before they start the amount of surgeries that they’ve had, and how many have ended up with a rediagnosis over time. 

But you should, even if the answer isn’t’ what you want to hear, fret be cause this actually isn’t as common as one may thing, and the cool thing about this is that over time, this is starting to improve as time goes on, and you’ll be able to, with this as well, improve your life, and the chances for this developing when you have IBD is starting to get less and less common, and it definitely does need to be talked about a little.