[Crohn's disease. Clinical and therapeutical considerations]

Crohn's disease is a chronic granulomatous inflammatory condition of the intestinal tract of unknown etiology. Most commonly the disease affects the small bowel, the colon and the rectum. The acute and aggressive forms can evolve fast, mimicking an acute surgical illness, requiring surgical intervention in emergency. Surgical therapeutical option, in this condition, must be determined strictly by establishing a correct intraoperative diagnosis, through macroscopic features and histologic evidence. Because it is an incurable disease with variable evolution, marked by recurrence, that involves repeated surgical intervention, the surgical treatment (often resection), must be most conservative from the small bowel. We present 3 cases of surgical interventions with emergency characteristics (bowel obstruction through fitobezoar, colonic tumors obstruction of colon splenic angle, urachal infected tumors). In these cases the diagnosis was established intraoperatively and the surgical intervention was adapted to the particular cases.