Complicated course of Crohn’s disease of the small intestine in the patient in the eighth decade of life

Abstract

Crohn‘s disease (CD) comes within the group of idiopathic bowel diseases (IDP), together with ulcerative colitis (UC). Their common characteristic is that genetically predisposed individuals suffer from chronic digestive tract inflammation. In spite of almost 90 years of experience, CD remains an incurable disease. The clinical manifestation of the disease displays great heterogeneity. A discrepancy between the clinical picture and morphological finding in the digestive tract is one of the typical features of CD. Basic treatment consists of pharmacotherapy – conventional and/or biological – and surgery where needed. The aim is to achieve and maintain deep remission, limit the number of large-scale surgical interventions, and normalise the patients’ quality of life. The case history presents a female patient suffering from CD with extensive penetrating damage of the small intestine diagnosed in the eighth decade of her life. The patient’s case illustrates the difficulty of treating elderly patients, especially in the case of a severe form of Crohn’s disease. Keywords Crohn’s disease, surgical treatment, penetrující forma, exkluzivní enterální výživa