So Much Variability in IBD - Part 2

Inflammatory bowel disease alone is a mine field for most people in the healthcare field but when you start adding in surgery, I think people (patients, caregivers, the public, people in the medical profession, etc) become lost to a degree. It is human nature to try and compare yourself or a loved one to someone else in a similar situation who is going through the same type of surgery. It is also very understandable why a physician who isn’t incredibly knowledgeable about inflammatory bowel disease may take what happened with one patient and believe that is the case for most. There is so much variability and I wanted to take this opportunity to share why.

In my previous article, I discussed how much there is to consider with the removal of the large intestine. Now I want to focus on the following:

Small Bowel Resection

Just like with the removal of the colon/large intestine, the surgical outcome of an inflammatory bowel disease patient undergoing a small bowel resection varies greatly from person to person.

Aside from some of the above questions I mentioned when talking about a colectomy, there are other factors to consider when someone undergoes a small bowel resection. A handful of these questions are:

Was the surgeon able to get all of the diseased portion of the small bowel (that he/she could see) or is the patient still looking at a bowel that is not under control in terms of inflammation and/or ulcerations? If so, will the patient need to be on an immunosuppressive medication of some kind following surgery?
Could short bowel syndrome be an issue or does the patient still have plenty of their small intestine left? Small bowel syndrome occurs when there is not enough small intestine to absorb the necessary nutrients needed to survive. In this case, many patients are either put on TPN (total parenteral nutrition) or given food through another tube.
Does the patient still have their large intestine/colon?