Extraintestinal complications of inflammatory bowel diseases.

Abstract

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) includes Crohns disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Those are chronic gastrointestinal disorders of inflammatory nature and not fully known etiology. As a result of their immune-mediated mechanism and complex impact on the whole organism other organs than gastrointestinal system may be affected in many ways. These extraintestinal manifestations (EIM) and complications may severely deteriorate prognosis of the patient, cause his morbidity and worsen the quality of life. While classical extraintestinal manifestations, such as enteropathic arthropathy, skin or eye involvement or primary sclerosing cholangitis, share common immunopathological mechanism with IBD, whole range of other disorders may result from various anatomical or metabolic abnormalities caused by IBD or its treatment. This review focus on the most common extraintestinal complications, such as anaemia, metabolic bone disease, biliary and urolithiasis, which we meet in our daily clinical practice.