Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be

talking to you about inflammatory bowel disease. If you want to follow along with written notes on this

topic, you can follow along in the gastroenterology section of zero to finals.com or in the

gastroenterology section of the zero

to finals medicine book. So let's get straight into it. Inflammatory bowel disease is the

umbrella term for the two main diseases that cause inflammation of the GI tract. And these are

ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. They both involve inflammation of the walls of the GI tract,

and they're associated with periods of remission and exacerbation of symptoms.

But Crohn's and ulcerative colitis have features that are quite distinct from each other,

and they're commonly tested in exams, and they

dictate different management plans. So it's worth learning what the differences are between the two

conditions. I have a pneumonic that you can use to remember the features of Crohn's disease and the features

of ulstive colitis. So we'll go through that now. For Crohn's disease, the pneumonic is nests, and I think of crow's nest, like Crohn's nest.

N is for no blood or mucus.

And you can get blood and mucus, but it's much less common than ulstive colitis.

The E is for entire GI tract, so it affects everywhere from the mouth

to the anus. S is for skip lesions, and skip lesions are something that you find on endoscopy

when you examine someone with Crohn's disease. T is for terminal ileum, which is most affected in Crohn's and transmural, which means

full thickness of the bowel wall. And you get transmural inflammation in Crohn's, but not in

ulstative colitis. And the final S in nests is smoking, and smoking is a risk factor in Crohn's.

And the way that you can remember this is that you don't want to light the nest on fire.

Crohn's is also associated more with weight loss, the development of strictures, and the development of fistula's.

...