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June 07, 2024
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Diagnosing inflammatory bowel disease

Florence-Damilola Odufalu, MD

Transcript

Editor's note: This is an automatically generated transcript. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

IBD is a diagnosis made by a combination of symptoms, endoscopy findings, histology, and imaging. So we're looking for signs of chronic inflammation anywhere in the GI tract, and evidence of inflammation that's leading to either malabsorption, or symptoms like diarrhea or blood in stools.

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are inflammatory bowel diseases.

While both cause inflammation and damage to the intestine, they affect different areas of the intestines, vary by depth of inflammation and have a distinct appearance in damaged areas.

Florence-Damilola Odufalu, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine, spoke with Healio about identifying and diagnosing inflammatory bowel disease.

an infographic detailing the differences of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. A the top is a green bar with white text centered in the middle that reads "Irritable Bowel Disease". Below it on the left hand columnare 2 depictions of the intestines. the top image has green circles highlighting the colon and rectum. the bottom image has green circles depicting patchy dmaaged areas of the gastrointestinal tract from the mouth to the anus. in the right column are green text that reads "Ulcerative Colitis" followed by three green arrows of bullet points that read "Affects the large intestine, or colon, and the rectum.; Damaged areas are continuous, typically beginning in the rectum and spreading into the colon.; Inflammation is only present in the innermost layer of the colon’s lining." Below that is another line of green text that reads "Crohn's Disease" followed by 3 more green arrow bullet points with black text that read "While it can affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract from the mouth to the anus, the part of the small intestine before the large intestine is most common.; Damaged areas appear patchy next to healthy areas of tissue.; Inflammation can be present through multiple layers of the GI tract." 
Data were derived from CDC.

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