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Preface

Living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) can be a challenge, not only for those of you who have Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, but also for those of you who have a family member or close friend afflicted with one of these disorders. Meeting this challenge requires the help of knowledgeable health-care professionals. Knowing what impact Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis may have on your life and what management strategies are available is also very important. A well-informed patient will have the best chance for recovery and remaining healthy.

However, the amount of information you can find when trying to learn about inflammatory bowel disease can be overwhelming. There are so many possible sources of information — doctors, nurses, books, pamphlets, websites, patient associations, Internet chat rooms, friends, and relatives. Often this information is confusing and contradictory. The quality of the information varies greatly from source to source. This information overload can leave you confused and frustrated, thus making it even more difficult to deal with these chronic diseases.

We have written this book in order to provide patients, families, friends, and health-care professionals with a clear, current, and concise account of the possible underlying causes, clinical features, and effective treatments of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Rather than simply presenting a list of facts about the disorders, we have given them an applied clinical context based on our years of experience with many hundreds of patients who have been evaluated, followed, and treated at the Mount Sinai Hospital IBD Centre. We have also tried to make this information directly relevant to IBD sufferers and their families by recounting case histories and answering the questions patients frequently ask. We hope to provide another means for dealing with these diseases, which we are only now really beginning to understand.