Colon Resection and IBS

It has been interesting to note the number of patients that I've seen at the IBS Treatment Center who have had part of or their entire colon removed, or to whom it has been suggested they have their colon removed. Many thousands of people per year undergo this procedure for a variety of reasons.

Unfortunately major surgery is not always the solution to their problem, nor does it always improve their symptoms.

A colon resection is also known as a colectomy. It is generally recommended when a person has significant damage to the colon. In many cases this may be due to a major ulceration, severe diverticulosis, or cancer. A colon resection may also be necessary to prevent perforation of the colon, which will lead to a major infection and is life threatening.

Removing a relatively short part of the colon may not be too problematic for the patient. But removing large parts or the entire colon will almost certainly result in diarrhea. This is because we absorb most of our water through our colon wall. In a complete colon removal a person will generally require a colostomy, where the intestinal tract is attached to the abdominal wall and an exterior bag replaces the colon.

This is of course an unpleasant lifelong situation, but it is certainly much better than not treating colon cancer or a severely damaged colon.

However, sometimes a colon resection is provided as the last hope of treatment for people with non-life threatening inflammation of the colon due to an unknown cause. These people can suffer from diarrhea, constipation, or abdominal pain, but gastroenterologists can find no reason for their suffering. In such cases it is hoped that removing the colon will solve their digestive problems.

Patients have even had a colon resection suggested to them by their doctor in order to treat chronic constipation. Resection will certainly remove any chance of constipation, but at what cost? In other cases patients have already had their colon removed, but the procedure did not change the suffering of the patient. We have seen incidences of both types of cases at the IBS Treatment Center. And a surprising number of these patients are in their 20s or 30s.

In many cases, removing the colon will not or has not addressed the cause of the problem, or has only solved part of the problem. The question still remains, what was the original cause of the unhealthy colon? The colon didn’t just “go bad.” There had to be some reason for the original irritation.

This is certainly true when a food allergy or parasitic infection is missed, which happens all too often. Both can trigger significant digestive problems, and removing an inflamed part of the digestive tract will not cure a food allergy or a microbial condition.

Each of the patients seen at the IBS Treatment Center who had either already had a colectomy or were contemplating one discovered several causal factors that were impacting their digestive health. By addressing those causal conditions they were able to experience significant improvement in their symptoms.

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Image thanks to creativecommons.org