In patients with Crohn’s disease who have multiple primary distal ileal strictures, surgery is a better initial choice of treatment than endoscopic balloon dilation, researchers have found.
The problem is not technical success, which was found to be good with an endoscopic approach. Rather, the balloon dilations often fail to resolve the narrowing, meaning a high proportion of patients undergo surgery anyway, said Nan Lan, MD, a research fellow in the Digestive Disease and Surgery