Crohn's Disease A Tough Dance To Master

A disease in disguise, one that mimics other gastrointestinal diseases and a difficult challenge for healthcare providers, diagnosing Crohn's disease is most certainly a difficult task for healthcare providers. Become it mimics so many other diseases, Crohn's disease may initially be misdiagnosed as another G.I. ailments.

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.

As your physician tries to determine if you do have Crohn's or not, one of the easiest medical exams to help on the journey is a stool sample. This sample can help your doctor to determine if your bowel upset is caused by an infection or by inflammation.

With those who suffer with Crohn's disease, your body acts as if it is battling an infection, but actually there is no true infection present. So with a simple stool sample review, it can be a bit like opening a treasure chest that tells all the bowel stories your physician could ever need!

Your health care provider may also select to do a group of standardized blood tests such as a complete blood count to check for signs of infection and anemia related to blood loss, a colonoscopy, a barium enema, a flexible sigmoidoscopy, a small bowel x-ray study, a capsule endoscopy, or even a CT scan of the abdomen.

A complete blood count can not only tell if are anemic or not, but it can also tell if you have an infection or not. Remember an infection typically points away from the diagnosis of Crohn's.

So you should already be able to see how difficult diagnosing Crohn's disease can be. However, just like putting the pieces of a puzzle together your physician should keep on going until a definitive diagnosis is made. You are worth it.

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!

While a colonoscopy is no one's idea of a good time, this procedure, typically performed by a gastroenterologist, can give your physician a more definitive reason to believe that you have Crohn's disease. During this exam, your doctor will insert a flexible lighted tube with an attached camera through your rectum and into your colon to check for any evidence 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.

Because it mimics so many other diseases diagnosing Crohn's disease can be a challenge. However, it is a challenge that is certainly worth undertaking so that you can get back to being a healthy you.

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