How to diagnose Crohn's disease

To treat Crohn's, the first thing to do is to correctly diagnose these diseases. The common diagnostic method is to diagnose through suspected clinical manifestations, or to exclude intestinal tuberculosis by combining biopsy with characteristic changes of CD.

① Patients with clinical manifestations can be suspected clinically and further examinations can be arranged;

② Patients with both colonoscopy or enteroscopy (lesions confined to the small intestine) and imaging (CTE or MRE, or barium intestinal radiography if unavailable) features can be clinically diagnosed;

③ If the biopsy shows characteristic changes of CD and intestinal tuberculosis can be ruled out, a clinical diagnosis can be made;

④ If there are surgical resection specimens (including the resected intestinal segment and lymph nodes near the lesion), a pathological diagnosis can be made according to the standard;

⑤ For newly diagnosed cases without pathological diagnosis, follow-up for more than 6 to 12 months can make a clinical diagnosis based on the response to treatment and changes in the condition, if it conforms to the natural course of CD. If the disease is unclear and confused with intestinal tuberculosis but tends to be intestinal tuberculosis, the patient should be given diagnostic treatment for intestinal tuberculosis for 8 to 12 weeks before differentiation.