Sign up for our newsletter

Irritable Bowel Disease – Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s

Irritable Bowel Diseases of the Intestines has 2 Main Players:

Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease

Although these two conditions are similar with some of their symptoms including Inflammation – There are also many differences.

But which condition is worse and more often seen is what I will discuss.

Several of the symptoms that are similar – bowel pain, diarrhea, and even Blood in the stool. Below is a chart that helps understand the similarties as well as the differences.

Patients with Irritable Bowel Disease have a difficult time because of the symptoms involved, the treatment options, and the social and physical impact it will have on their lives.

Learning to live with Irritable Bowel Disease can be overwhelming and difficult.

	Ulcerative Collitis	Crohn’s Disease
Location:	Colon, Rectum	Colon, Rectum, Ileum, Oral Cavity
Symptoms:	Diarrhea, Pain and blood in stool	Diarrhea, Pain and occasional blood in stool
Autoimmune:	Unlikely	Yes
Fistula:	None or Minimal	Often
Stenosis:	None or Minimal	Often
Surgical cure:	Yes	Minimal to none
Remissions:	Yes	Yes
Smoking:	Low risk	High risk
Treatments:	Immunosuppressants	Immunosuppressants
	Steroids, other	Steroids, other
Prevalence:	7 out of every 100,000	35 out of every 100,000
Risk of Cancer:	Yes	Yes
Long Term	Surgery is often curative	Curative treatment is not likely.
Outcomes:	Occasionally however, without	can be life quality altering and
	treatment complications are	death can occur due to worsening
	often seen and death will	conditions.
	occur in serious conditions.

Both of these conditions can be life threatening…but only one is, for the most part, non-curative.

Both conditions have abdominal pain and diarrhea and when comparing specific cases would not be helpful due to the difference is severity.

But when looked on a whole then more enlightening results can be seen.

Worse condition is Crohn’s disease –  but not by much.

More often seen is Ulcerative Colitis

We also must keep in mind that these are general thoughts – individual cases may vary.