Inflammatory Bowel Disease Treatments

Options for your personal IBD treatment plan.

At Henry Ford Health, we offer the latest and most advanced treatment options for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). You and your doctor will create a personalized treatment plan based on your unique symptoms, needs and concerns. Your treatment plan likely will include one or more of the following options:

Nutrition management and preventive care for IBD

Eating a healthy diet is especially important if you have IBD. That’s why you’ll work with our registered dietitians to create a healthy eating plan as part of your care. By eating specific foods and avoiding others, you can:

• Promote healing of the intestines
• Reduce and relieve your IBD symptoms
• Replace nutrients you may have lost because of diarrhea and other symptoms

Our team will also provide regular screenings and well care to ensure you stay healthy and prevent possible IBD complications. Your preventive care will include:

• Bone health checks
• Cancer screening
• Nutritional status checks and monitoring of vitamins
• Vaccination verification

Medication therapy for IBD

Our goal for medication therapy is to reduce the inflammation that triggers your IBD symptoms. With the quality and effectiveness of our IBD medications, our skilled IBD specialists often can successfully treat IBD without the need for surgery.

If your IBD is mild to moderate, oral (pill) medications are our first line of defense. If you experience moderate to severe symptoms from your IBD, your treatment plan may include medications in pill form as well as injections and infusion therapy. While you or a loved one can administer injection medications at home, infusion medications require you to come to one of our centers for treatment.

Our IBD clinical trials

The Henry Ford Center for IBD is on the front lines of research and clinical trials for new IBD treatments. You and your doctor may decide that you’re a good candidate for one of our clinical trials for IBD medications. To learn more about whether you’re a good candidate for one of our clinical trials, call us at (248) 344-2388, or email us.

Surgery for IBD

Though today’s IBD medications are more successful than ever, you and your doctor may decide that surgery is the best choice for you if you don’t experience enough symptom relief with medication therapy alone. We work closely with expert colorectal surgeons to make sure you get the care you need.

Whenever possible, our surgeons use minimally invasive surgical techniques. Minimally invasive surgery often leads to less pain, faster recovery and less risk of infection compared to traditional open surgery.

Some of the surgical treatments we offer for IBD include:

• Ileal pouch surgery: This procedure to treat ulcerative colitis involves removing the diseased colon (large intestine) and rectum while still allowing you to have normal bowel movements.
• Strictureplasty: This procedure to treat Crohn’s disease involves widening areas of the intestine that have become too narrow because of a buildup of scar tissue.
• Colectomy: This procedure involves removing the entire colon.