Why Does Crohn’s Disease Take So Long To Diagnose?

Here is another question that was submitted to us about Crohn’s Disease. A CrohnsHelp.com subscriber asked us:

Why does Crohn’s Disease take so long to diagnose? It’s very painful and it seems that other diseases can be diagnosed with things as simple as a blood test?

Great question and I definitely understand where you are coming from! It took the doctors well over 4 months to diagnose me and I was in immense pain (only 13 years old). I got to the point where I lost 30 pounds, stopped eating and was in pain all day long.

Here are all the tests they did on me:

- Barrium CT Scan
- Nuclear Gal Bladder Exam
- UltraSound
- X-rays (many)
- Blood Tests
- Tape Worm Treatment
- Colonoscopy
- Endoscopy

They finally caught it with the last two, but it took them a long time to reach an agreement to even do those exams - I’ll admit, partly because of a bad doctor who refused to send me to a specialist (thinking there really was nothing seriously wrong with me).

Well, the main reason it is so hard to diagnose is that digestive diseases are hard to see through your “blood count” and many of them have very similar symptoms.

The only way to really diagnose is through scoping your intestines. Even that can be difficult because Crohn’s Disease can be all over your small intestine. Until recently, they had no way of seeing your small intestine, of course now they have a “pill camera” they use…

So, it is getting quicker and quicker - more doctors are starting to resort to doing scope exams quicker which is helping a lot…

4 October 2006 | Crohn's Disease, Personal | Comments