Word: crohn
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Your article states that "no one knows the cause of Crohn's disease, although researchers suspect that a virus or flaw in the body's immune system may be involved" [June 22]. If "externalized anger and rage" can cause an Adolf Hitler to act as he did, if it can cause men to attempt to assassinate Presidents and Popes, and shoot blank cartridges at Queens, why cannot "internalized anger and rage" cause the bowels to churn themselves into inflammatory masses, coronary arteries to turn into morbid spasms and bronchial tubes to go into asthmatic constrictions? There are many...
Rosen, 44, needs all this food -enough to feed a family of eight-as a result of treatment for a mysterious and frustrating intestinal disorder, Crohn's disease. A chronic inflammation of the bowel, Crohn's afflicts an estimated 1 million Americans, including 100,000 children. It goes by a variety of other names, including regional enteritis, ileitis and granulomatous colitis, depending on which part of the intestinal tract is affected. Repeated flare-ups can totally block the intestine. Fistulas or abnormal passages may develop in the inflamed bowel and lead into adjacent organs. In some instances...
...knows the cause of Crohn's disease, although researchers suspect that a virus or a flaw in the body's immune system may be involved. A cure is similarly elusive. In attempting to control the disease, doctors use drugs that suppress inflammation and the immune system. In severe cases, they must resort to surgery, cutting away diseased portions of bowel and then reconnecting the ends or creating a hole through the abdomen so wastes can be collected in a pouch. But even with such drastic measures, the disease may recur, necessitating more extensive operations...
Rosen's case is an extreme example of Crohn's disease. Her illness began when she was 19 and was treated with drugs alone for 20 years. But since 1976, she has undergone six operations; she has lost her large intestine and all but 27½ in. of her 20-ft.-long small intestine. Because food passes through her truncated bowel so quickly, she does not get needed nutrients or fluids. To stay alive, she must eat eleven full meals a day,* a total of 20,000 calories. She also receives supplemental fluids intravenously and vitamin injections...
Some bright young surgeons leaped to the conclusion that Ike's type of operation, which has been abandoned in some medical centers, must have been wrong. They cited impressive authorities. Dr. Burrill B. Crohn, who first described and named the disease, says in his basic text, Regional Ileitis, that cutting off the diseased ileum "is a sine qua non to the success of any operation." Less than two years ago, at a doctors' round table, New York Hospital Surgeon William F. Nickel Jr. said to Crohn: "One should never [join] small bowel to large bowel . . . without dividing...