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Reply to "Crohns Diagnosis after J-Pouch surgery"

The diagnosis is irrelevant. It’s inflammation of the bowel that needs to be treated. That’s all that matters. All the treatments for bowel inflammation are the same or similar so what you choose to call the inflammation doesn’t particularly matter any more. What does matter is how you will respond to the treatment whether it’s antibiotics or, as in our cases, biological drugs like Stelara or Remicade.

Both of my last two GI doctors essentially gave up using labels like “colitis”, “pouchitis” or “Crohn’s”. Labels like these meant something 50 years ago when medical science didn’t know much about inflammatory bowel disease. Now we just call it inflammation. Inflammation is not good, and it needs to be treated. So worry about the right treatment which will keep it in check and don’t worry about the label for it because it’s meaningless. My technical diagnosis is Crohn’s, but it’s well treated. Would you rather have well treated “Crohn’s”, or “pouchitis” that can’t effectively be treated and results in loss of J Pouch? This is why worrying about labels is so utterly pointless. We all respond to treatment for inflammation differently so the labels used for the inflammation being treated don’t in any way become predictive or suggestive of an outcome.

You are a young guy and apparently in good shape, so I would say your chances of treating it are pretty good.

 

Last edited by CTBarrister
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