“Treatment for children with Crohn's disease?”
My 12 year old son was just seen by a doctor who says he probably has Crohn's disease. What is the treatment for children with Crohn's disease?
2 Answers
Crohn's disease has a wide spectrum of different phenotypes. Your Gastroenterologist will determine which treatment option is best suitable for your phenotype.
This is a very big topic and cannot be done justice in this forum. But in general, Crohn's is treated by reducing the bowel inflammation using various medications in combination. The key is to achieve deep remission in which the bowel is seen to be completely normal on colonoscopy. Common meds used include Remicade, Humira, azathioprine, mercaptopurine. A good resource to learn about IBD and treatments are the crohnscolitisdoundation.org and the AGA websites.
Lastly, make sure you find the GI doctor with the most experience managing IBD in your area. IBD is quite difficult to treat so you want someone good to guide you. A university setting is often the best place to go because they may have an IBD center or at least one GI doc dedicated to IBD. The best IBD centers in the US are at UCSD, UCSF, Cedars Sinai, UCLA,
Baylor, U of Chicago, Northwestern, Cleveland Clinic, Wash U St. Louis, Mount Sinai, U Miami, UNC, Vanderbilt.
Good luck.
Lastly, make sure you find the GI doctor with the most experience managing IBD in your area. IBD is quite difficult to treat so you want someone good to guide you. A university setting is often the best place to go because they may have an IBD center or at least one GI doc dedicated to IBD. The best IBD centers in the US are at UCSD, UCSF, Cedars Sinai, UCLA,
Baylor, U of Chicago, Northwestern, Cleveland Clinic, Wash U St. Louis, Mount Sinai, U Miami, UNC, Vanderbilt.
Good luck.
