Quality of life after surgical therapy of small bowel stenosis in Crohn's disease

Background: Improvement in quality of life is one of the import:ant determi nants in the treatment of Crohn's disease. Since there is no cure with radi cal resection of inflamed bowel, strictureplasty has become a useful surgic al technique in the treatment of small bowel obstruction. The scope of this study was to define the results of strictureplasty and resection in terms of quality of life, surgical recurrence and postoperative complications. Me thods: The charts of 67 patients with Crohn's disease of the small bower we re analyzed retrospectively. Patients were treated either by strictureplast y (group A) or resection (group B). Quality of life was evaluated in follow -up examinations using the inflammatory Bower Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ), Results: Postoperative morbidity was 14.8% after strictureplasty and 17% a fter resection (p = 0.8). 50% of the patients treated by strictureplasty an d 37% treated by resection developed recurrent disease (p = 0.40). Quality- of-life measurement revealed no significant difference between patients tre ated by strictureplasty or resection, Conclusion: Results after stricturepl asty are comparable to those after resection in terms of complications, rec urrence and quality of life in the treatment of small bower strictures in C rohn's disease, In the long run there might be an advantage for stricturepl asty because it prevents complications caused by resectional therapy such a s short bowel syndrome. Copyright (C) 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel.