Chorn’s and CT Scan of Abs –help Treatment!

Posted In: Health faq by admin

Hi everyone,

For those of you who have had a CTscan on your ab for pain etc.. have you ever had them come back completely normal and found nothing yet you suffer from severe symptoms? can a CT scan show if you have Crohn’s disease or not or even colitis?

I’m just wondering what conclusions can come from it..
i have had major illeus for a long time, but also have chron’s, but i dont think i’m flaring so i’m wondering when i go to do my ct scan next week, can it show i dont have crohn’s disease anymore?

and maybe show nothing at all even though i have severe pain etc…??

i just read a lot of people who are frustrated trying to see what is wrong with them and they don’t get any answers.. thank you all in advance!

Answer: I’m a gastroenterologist and have many patients with Crohn’s. CT scans are able to show significant inflammation, scarring, etc but commonly won’t show subtle degrees of disease involvement. It’s not always easy to determine the activity of someone’s disease, and we sometimes need to rely on blood tests as well as scopes to help clarify the situation. For instance, colonoscopy is much more valuable than scans in assessing degree of activity of colitis.

I can understand your frustration with the situation. If the diagnosis of Crohn’s is accurate, it’s probably not realistic to expect that the disease will magically disappear. The best you can hope for is remission, which can usually be achieved with currently available treatment. Good luck!