About 70,000 people each year in the United States receive a diagnosis of an inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn’s disease. This sets these patients on a journey with which you are likely all too familiar.
While management tools and treatments for Crohn’s disease continue to improve, complications are hard to prevent and often require surgery. In fact, about 80% of people with Crohn’s disease face surgical intervention at some point during the course of their disease.
If this need should arise for you or a loved one, you’re in excellent hands at Rockwall Surgical Specialists. Our team has a good deal of experience with colon surgeries, including those that address the all-too-common side effects of Crohn’s disease.
Here, we discuss some of the more common surgeries we perform for people with Crohn’s disease that help to improve their quality of life.
One of the most common reasons people with Crohn’s disease require surgery at some point is for intestinal stricture, a condition in which your intestines narrow because of scar tissue. This narrowing can block waste from passing easily through your intestines and create uncomfortable problems.
With a strictureplasty, we widen those areas that scar tissue has narrowed.
People with inflammatory bowel disease are at a significantly increased risk for colon cancer. This heightened risk is due to the fact that the cells in your colon are fighting inflammation and they’re turning over more rapidly, which leaves more room for abnormal cells to develop.
If we discover the presence of precancerous or cancerous cells, or if your bowel has a good deal of scar tissue, you might benefit from a bowel resection, a procedure in which we remove part of your bowel.
In some cases, we may need to remove all of your bowel, and we create bypasses for your waste through an ostomy — an opening in your stomach — or we create a new route to your anus.
Another common side effect of Crohn’s disease, fistulas are passageways that form between two body parts — passageways that shouldn't be there and are creating problems, such as painful abscesses.
Different types of fistulas are associated with Crohn’s disease, including anal and perianal fistulas, as well as bowel-to-bladder fistulas and bowel-to-vagina tunnels.
In many of these cases, we can surgically close off the fistula and drain any abscess that has formed.
We review each case thoroughly to be sure conservative efforts have been exhausted.
If we do find that surgery is your best path forward for relief and for your health, we want to emphasize again that you’re in very capable hands. Our team is not only experienced in the field of colon surgery, but we also use the most minimally invasive surgical techniques, such as laparoscopy, whenever possible.
If you have more questions about surgery for your Crohn’s disease, please don’t hesitate to contact us at one of our Texas locations. We have offices in Rockwall, Rowlett, Greenville, Terrell, and Forney.
