Symptoms and Impacts from Crohn's Disease
Symptoms from Crohn's disease
Crohn's disease an inflammatory bowel disease condition characterized by skip lesions and transmural inflammation that can effect your entire GI tract from mouth to anus. (Feuerstein, and Cheifetz, 2017) Diarrhea, abdominal pain, weight loss, nausea, vomiting's, and in some cases fevers and chills are all presenting symptoms of Crohn's disease. There are also three main disease phenotypes, inflammatory, structuring, and penetrating. While there are these three underlying disease phenotypes, there is also the chance that up to a third of patience will develop perianal involvement of their disease. In some cases extraintestinal manifestations may develop. (Feuerstein, and Cheifetz, 2017) This diagnosis is typically discovered with endoscopic and/or radiologic findings. Crohn's management is usually done with pharmacologic therapy. which is determined based on the severity and underlying disease phenotype. The goal of management is to control inflammation and reduce a clinical remission with the pharmacologic therapy but most patients will eventually require surgery for their disease. Even though they get surgery they still are not cured because surgery is not curative and patients will still require ongoing therapy for disease recurrence. Primary care physicians play an important role in optimizing the preventative care management because of risk complication from Crohn's disease and the medication used to treat the disease. (Feuerstein, and Cheifetz, 2017)
Below is pictured the intestine, on the left is one with Crohn's disease and on the right is an intestine that is healthy. Below the intestines are more areas that can be affected with Crohn's disease and the symptoms.
How Cronh's Impacts Development
65-85 percent of children and adolescents who are diagnosed with Crohn's disease have growth failure and impaired nutritional status. Out of that percent 15-40 percent of them will suffer from growth deficiency throughout the course of their disease. In a study conducted it was shown that males are more vulnerable to the growth deficiencies than female. This is because puberty occurs later and last longer than in females. (NIH, 2014)
How Crohn's Disease Impacts Cognitive Skills
Impaired cognitive function is a stable function of patients with Crohn's disease, even when remission has been achieved. (Clarke, 2020) In the study that was observed there were many different cognitive areas examined with patients who had Crohn's disease. At the end of this study it was determine that patients with Crohn's disease have a selective attention and response inhabitation deficit. It was also discovered that these individuals exhibited impaired visuospatial memory performance across their visits throughout the study. (Clarke, 2020) Although this was the result from this study, there is still an inconsistency when it comes to cognitive impairments in CD patients. This is due to differing levels of disease activity and medication use in patients, or differences in the psychometric properties of the cognitive assessments which were employed. (Clarke, 2020)
How Crohn's Disease Impacts Emotions
Stress has a huge impact on individuals with Crohn's disease because it results in a flare up. Individuals with Crohn's disease are more likely to be stressed which often leads to anxiety and depression, and these all have an effect on the digestive system. In many studies over the years it has been indicated that both children and adults with IBD have a higher prevalence of mental disorders than that of healthy people. (NIH, 2019)
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