What are the symptoms of Crohn's disease? How is it diagnosed?

Crohn's disease is called chronic specific inflammation of the intestine, more often - the area of the small intestine before its transition into the thick. This is one of the most terrible diseases, which is often quite difficult to diagnose; It is characterized by an inflammatory process of the intestinal wall, which causes ulcers, fistulas, perforations and internal bleeding.

Causes of Crohn's Disease

For some reason, it has not been possible to find one yet. It is believed that such an intestinal lesion can arise due to infection with a koreal-like virus (also the role of other viruses and bacteria, for example, pseudotuberculous mycobacteria) is also not excluded; The occurrence of an abnormal immune response in response to food or some other antigen. Perhaps some of those proteins that make up the intestinal wall cause an abnormal reaction of the defense system, as a result, the antibodies recognize their own intestines as an alien body and begin to attack it.

What are the symptoms of Crohn's disease ?

The disease is registered more often in children and young people. "Favorite" his age - from 12 to 30 years.

Three main symptoms of this disease are described: abdominal pain, diarrhea and weight loss. But with Crohn's disease these symptoms have several distinctive features.

• Diarrhea (diarrhea) can look different depending on which parts of the intestines are affected. So, it can be a copious stool containing the remnants of undigested food, which is badly washed from the toilet bowl, and can be feces denser, with an admixture of blood and mucus. But, unlike other diseases, this is not a permanent symptom. The act of defecation can be accompanied by pain, but there is no painful urge to empty the bowel.
The main symptoms of Crohn's disease are abdominal pains with localization usually in the lower abdomen and on the right, resembling signs of appendicitis. Painful sensations can be located in the area around the navel, and in the left lower abdomen. Skin-like, they intensify, usually after eating, are weakened after defecation. If this pain was first noted, then it became permanent, and the fever rose, which could mean that an abscess forms at the site of the inflammation of the intestine.
• The body temperature rises, usually to low digits.
• Weakness, fatigue.
• Loss of appetite until its complete disappearance.
• Weight loss to catastrophic figures, due to the fact that because of intestinal damage there is no absorption of nutrients.
• Sometimes the first evidence of Crohn's disease is symptoms from the rectum and anus: it can form cracks, fistulas, inflammation. This is due to the fact that poorly digested food is an irritant for this area.
• If Crohn's disease appeared even in childhood, such a child lags behind in both physical and sexual development. And this may be the only symptom: the belly of the baby does not necessarily hurt, there is almost no diarrhea, or it is periodic and not very pronounced.
• The acute form of Crohn's disease is very reminiscent of acute appendicitis, because of what such patients operate, and only this diagnosis is intraoperatively.
• There is also a form of the disease - stenosing. In this case, abdominal pain is unstable, can be localized every time in different places, sometimes there is an increase in body temperature, which is difficult to find the cause. Occasionally there are pains in different joints. After a while it becomes noticeable that the child lags behind in physical development, besides, he begins to complain of abdominal pains, more often on the right and below, accompanied by rumbling, swelling, gas and stool retention.
Primary chronic course is characterized by periodically arising diarrhea, a person becomes pale, swollen, if it is a child, then it lags behind in development.

If you think that you have Crohn's disease, the symptoms of the diagnosis should be confirmed. Usually such events are held:

1. X-ray examination:

A) Irrigoscopy, when radiopaque barium is injected through the rectum;

B) research when a person drinks barium.

2. Endoscopic examination, when a fiber optic probe of small diameter is inserted into the intestine, and an image of the intestinal wall is seen on the monitor. During such an investigation, a biopsy of suspicious sites for this pathology is taken.

How is Crohn's disease determined? Symptoms, photos of the endoscopic picture of the intestine - the basic criteria, based on which the diagnosis is established.