Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) encompasses chronic inflammatory conditions like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, affecting nearly 1% of the population. These disorders cause persistent inflammation of the digestive tract, leading to symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, and fatigue. Management varies from anti-inflammatory therapies and biologic agents targeting the immune system to surgery for severe, chronic inflammation, aiming to reduce symptoms and prevent complications.
Why Choose Loyola for Inflammatory Bowel Disease?
Having a team of board-certified experts providing critical care when you need it most is important. This care our expert gastrointestinal & GI surgery specialists provide has been nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals list.
The digestive health team at Loyola Medicine can diagnose conditions of inflammatory bowel disease in many different ways and promptly treat the cause of your symptoms so you return to normal as soon as possible.
What Conditions are Treated by Inflammatory Bowel Disease Specialists?
The clinical specialists at Loyola are experts at diagnosing and managing patients with the following conditions:
The clinical specialists at Loyola are experts at diagnosing and managing patients with the following conditions:
Inflammatory Bowel Disease Treatments at Loyola
Medicine is used as the initial treatment for all patients; surgery is reserved for those who do not respond to treatment or cannot tolerate the side effects of the medications.
Your gastroenterologist will additionally continue to guide your care during any necessary hospitalization. Infusion centers are conveniently located for patients requiring those types of treatments.
If an operation becomes necessary, the inflammatory bowel disease team will work together and discuss surgical options, including the less-invasive laparoscopic approach.
Additionally, a multidisciplinary approach is frequently utilized to effectively address extraintestinal manifestations of disease, including complex psychosocial support.
Our specialized nursing team, including an advanced practice nurse practitioner, serve as a unique resource for our patients and greatly improve communication and their understanding of the disease and treatments.
Diagnostic Services Offered for Inflammatory Bowel Disease
To diagnose inflammatory bowel disease, Loyola specialists utilize various tests to help pinpoint and manage the disease.
Additionally, validated patient reported disease activity indices and measures of health-related quality of life are routinely utilized to drive a personalized care approach to improve patients’ symptoms.
As part of the evaluation, in addition to blood and stool tests, patients may undergo one or several of the following tests:
- Anoscopy
- Colectomy
- Colonoscopy
- Colorectal surgery
- Colostomy
- CT colonography
- CT enterography
- Fecal microbiota transplantation
- High resolution anorectal manometry
- Ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA)
- Ileoscopy
- Ileostomy
- Laparoscopic surgery
- MR enterography
- Pelvic exenteration
- Polypectomy
- Pouchoscopy
- Push enteroscopy
- Robotic surgery
- Sigmoidoscopy
- Single balloon enteroscopy
- Sphincter-sparing treatment
- Strictureplasty
- Transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM)
- Transanal minimally invasive surgery (TAMIS)
- Upper endoscopy (EGD)
- Video capsule endoscopy
Ongoing Research to Advance IBD Procedures
As an academic medical center, Loyola’s division of gastroenterology places special emphasis on research. We view this as essential to advancing the field and improving outcomes for our patients.
Basic science research and clinical research are conducted by our faculty on topics such as Barrett's esophagus, GERD, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease and gastrointestinal motility.
Loyola’s IBD team has extensive experience in clinical care and clinical research. Advancements include being among the first to describe:
- Strategies to improve long term IBD treatment durability
- Identification and description of the impact of Clostridium difficile infections and its treatment in IBD patients
- Emphasis of impactful quality metrics preparing IBD patients for immunosuppressive therapy
- Identifications of risk factors for hospital readmission in IBD patients
- Optimizing IBD patients’ health-related quality of life
- Accurate identification and removal of pre-cancerous colon polyps through novel cancer surveillance techniques with state-of-the-art equipment
- Optimization of the care- and health-related quality of life of pregnant IBD patients
- Successful management strategies for IBD patients’ with chronic liver disease
- Special nutrition considerations for IBD patients
- Identification of unique features to emphasize in the treatment of adolescents with IBD
Our program continues to maintain an active research presence with participation in clinical trials, treatment registries, as well as patient opportunities to be part of a research database to ultimately help improve IBD outcomes measured by not only treatment success, but also by high quality, efficient care delivery and patient satisfaction.
Learn about our clinical trials
