[Complications of chronic inflammatory bowel disorders: treatment]

Complications of chronic inflammatory bowel disease are nowadays relatively rare due to improved surgical and conservative treatment. They are better recognized with modern diagnostic techniques and can be more easily classified and thus treated. Analyses of large cohorts demonstrate that the survival of patients is still not completely normal. However, only a small part of the deaths observed is due to inflammatory bowel disease. For the various complications such as toxic megacolon, severe bleeding, stenosis and ileus, fistulae and abscesses well defined therapeutic approaches are available in spite of the lack of larger controlled trials. Knowledge of these approaches by the primarily treating physician is necessary in order to provide patients with adequate treatment from competent experts. Regarding neoplasia earlier numbers are probably not valid any more since consequent remission maintenance treatment and observation seems to eliminate this complication to a large extent.