Ulcerative Colitis

Information

Ulcerative colitis, like Crohn's disease, is an inflammatory bowel disease. Similar to it, the cause is not fully understood - theories include dysfunction of the immune system, genetics, changes in normal intestinal bacteria and environmental factors. Unlike Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis affects the intestinal mucosa superficially, and the disease always involves the rectum and a varying part of the colon, or the entire colon - pancolitis.

Types:
Depending on which part of the intestine is affected, there can be proctitis, rectosigmoiditis, left-sided colitis, or pancolitis.

Symptoms:
The most common symptoms are bloody diarrhea, mucus, urgent urges to defecate, tenesmus. Weight loss, general malaise, and anemia may also be observed.

Treatment:
Treatment can be conservative or surgical. In order to begin treatment, a gastroenterologist must perform a thorough diagnosis - endoscopy (colonoscopy) with biopsies taken, and testing of various biochemical markers - most often calprotectin. Based on the endoscopic findings and the histological result of the biopsy taken, the appropriate individual treatment is selected for the patient. Most often these are various aminosalicylates, immunosuppressants, corticosteroids, and increasingly in practice, so-called biological therapies, which are monoclonal antibodies with a strictly specific action in the inflammatory process.

Treatment is long-term - most often for life - and patients are actively monitored by their treating gastroenterologist.