title: Crohn's disease: clinical-surgical questions and imaging answers.
abstract: Crohn's disease is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) characterized by a relapsing clinical pattern that typically affects people during their adult and economically productive lives. Affected patients require clinical follow-up because of the periodic flare-up of the disease and of the risk of long-term complications. Extensive diagnostic procedures, medical and surgical treatments are often needed over a lifetime. The challenge posed by the management of IBD is better faced by a multidisciplinary team that includes health care providers with complementary diagnostic or therapeutic skills. The team is expected to provide the best practice to manage IBD by defining a realistic "diagnostic and therapeutic pathway" for the patients to follow based on the locally available professional, structural and technological resources. For such a "pathway" the correct questions and answers are essential. Sometimes it is not easy to make sense out of these questions. To ask a right question is not simple. Of course, different surgeons and gastroenterologists ask different questions. If radiologists want to choose the right imaging method, they must know these questions. There exist a simple equation: good question=correct imaging method=right answer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Faculty Hospital Brno and Medical Faculty Brno, Jihlavská 20, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic. vlvalek@med.muni.cz
authors.forename: Vlastimil
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Válek
authors.forename: Jakub
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hustý
mesh_terms: D003424:Crohn Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000601:surgery; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D013505:Digestive System Surgical Procedures / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D025321:Surgery, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*