IBD Medical-Surgery Clinic

What is the clinic?

The combined Medical-Surgery Clinic provides a single setting where patients with IBD can address all surgery-related needs with a team that includes their IBD physician, surgeon, and dietitian. Patients start with a consultation to understand what the surgery will entail and why it is being considered. If you proceed with surgery, you will continue to visit the clinic both before and after surgery to ensure optimal outcomes.

What makes our clinic unique?

When surgery becomes a potential option for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), many questions arise. If it’s not clear whether surgery is the best path forward, a thorough discussion of the pros and cons becomes paramount. And when the need for surgery is clear, patients with IBD, their medical providers, and the surgical team work in tandem to address issues such as medical and nutritional optimization prior to the surgery, surgical planning, and post-surgical management.

IBD patients benefit from combined medical and surgical management

• By meeting with both the surgeon and IBD clinician in the same visit, you save time and travel as all your IBD needs are taken care of at the same time as your peri-surgical needs are being addressed
• In Crohn’s disease, perianal fistulas can be complex, and having a surgeon and IBD physician reviewing the data together with you allows you to best understand the sequence of events that need to occur for healing
• Patients with Crohn’s disease may experience symptoms, such as abdominal pain, bloating, and nausea, due to stricturing disease. Patients can benefit greatly from a joint consultation to determine whether continued medical treatment or a surgical intervention is the best approach
• Patients who have had ulcerative colitis for many years may be at higher risk of developing dysplasia in the colon, raising difficult decisions about whether to consider colonic resection or consider further endoscopic surveillance. Joint discussion between you, the surgeon and the IBD specialist is important to determining optional strategies for management