UPMC On Topic Transcript
Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Symptoms and Diagnosis
Miguel Regueiro, MD
Director, Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center
Early diagnosis and treatment is imperative in inflammatory bowel disease.
The symptoms are varied. They range from diarrhea, to abdominal pain, to weight loss, to bleeding, to fever. Some people actually will present with symptoms outside the gastrointestinal tract. So for example, joint pain or arthritis or skin rashes. So it can present in many different ways.
The symptoms that usually should prompt one to see a physician are what we call the alarm symptoms. So certainly, people who have diarrhea or abdominal pain that last more than a day or two. So it’s more than just a bug.
Certainly anybody who loses more than 10 pounds, that’s an alarm symptom that should be brought to the attention of their physician.
Diagnoses is the first step
To diagnose inflammatory bowel disease usually requires several tests. One are blood tests, two oftentimes are some type of radiographic test, meaning either CAT scan or an upper GI series where somebody drinks barium and takes x-ray pictures, and often some kind of endoscopic testing. That whole diagnosis or that whole time to diagnosis can be as short as a week or two. So usually we can make a very quick accurate diagnosis and come up with a treatment plan within one to two weeks.
Sooner treatment … better results
If we can correct and catch the inflammation at its earliest stage we can almost reverse the disease course. We can change the natural history of the disease, we can prevent surgery, we can prevent cancer, we can prevent hospitalizations. So early diagnosis is of paramount importance in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.