Surgical Emergencies in Crohn’s Disease

Abstract

Crohn’s disease, as a chronic inflammatory disease of unknown etiology that can affect any part of the alimentary canal from the mouth to the anus, has a highly variable course and a very unpredictable evolution. Even surgery does not cure CD, it has however a relevant role in its treatment in combination to medical therapy during the large course of the disease; indeed almost each patient is submitted to a surgical intervention during his life. Nowadays, surgery is considered the last treatment to use whenever medical therapy is insufficient to control symptoms; this choice involves an intervention on more serious patients with more surgical complications. Surgery finds in the Crohn’s disease a main role in the management of the obstructive or septic complications; however, elective surgical treatments are proposed in patients with sub-occlusive presentation due to chronic fistulas or with high CD index (>220) with a terminal ileum-cecum disease.