Dario Sorrentino
Little is known on the natural history of Crohn's disease (CD) before diagnosis. By the time the patient is diagnosed, the disease has often produced considerable damage to the intestinal mucosa and sometimes other organs. Such period before diagnosis might involve both a silent and a symptomatic phase. The silent phase, or preclinical CD, might last several years after the biological disease onset. Evidence is accumulating that the symptomatic phase might also go undiagnosed for months or years. In fact, for each established case of CD, there are probably several undiagnosed cases, a classic iceberg phenomenon of disease...
February 2016: Inflammatory Bowel Diseases