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 determinants in the treatment of Crohn's disease. Since there is no cure with radical resection of inflamed bowel, strictureplasty has become a useful surgical 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. Methods: The charts of 67 patients with Crohn's disease of the small bower were analyzed retrospectively. Patients were treated either by strictureplasty (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% after resection (p = 0.8). 50% of the patients treated by strictureplasty and 37% treated by resection developed recurrent disease (p = 0.40). Quality-of-life measurement revealed no significant difference between patients treated by strictureplasty or resection, Conclusion: Results after strictureplasty are comparable to those after resection in terms of complications, recurrence and quality of life in the treatment of small bower strictures in Crohn's disease, In the long run there might be an advantage for strictureplasty because it prevents complications caused by resectional therapy such as short bowel syndrome. Copyright (C) 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel.