Reducing the Risks of Operation

As patients with Crohn’s disease are likely to need many operations during the course of their life, it is important that the surgeon should make surgery as safe as possible. Our goal is that no patient should die as the result of an operation for Crohn’s disease. This ideal depends, partly, on the patients being referred for surgery before they become too ill and partly on the acceptance that surgeons should tailor their operative intervention to the fitness of the patient presented to them. They should always try to operate with the patient in optimum condition and, when they do operate, they should try to consider and avoid all possible complications.