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Inflammatory Bowel Disease Inflammatory Bowel Disease Treatment

When Medication is Not Enough: Surgery for Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Erica Heilman

It is estimated that as many as one million people in the United States live with inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD. IBD actually refers to a group of bowel conditions, characterized by inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Most often the affected areas are in the small intestine or colon, and the most common forms of IBD are Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The symptoms of IBD can be painful and sometimes disabling, and many people with IBD must rely on medications for a lifetime. For some, however, medications cause intolerable side effects; for others, medication simply does not work. IBD can cause such difficult and compromising complications that no medical therapy is sufficient treatment.

When medication fails, or the pain and inconvenience of IBD is unbearable, surgery becomes an important option. Dr. Mark Reiner is an assistant clinical professor of surgery at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Below, he discusses surgical options for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

When is surgery an option in people with inflammatory bowel disease?
In order to understand when an IBD patient needs surgery, we have to understand why they need it, and there are really two times when patients need surgery for inflammatory bowel disease, the most common of those diseases being ulcerative colitis or Crohn's.