Managing Your Child's Crohn's Disease or Ulcerative Colitis
by Keith Benkov, MD & Harland Winter, MD

This book is regarded as the best and most complete up to date educational aid that there is on IBD in children and adolescents and was produced with the support of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). Not only does this book serve as a practical guide to understanding all aspects of Crohn's & Colitis, but it also gives a great deal of comfort with its positive advice on how parents and children can learn to live with IBD.

Divided into 3 main parts, part 1 of the book gives an introductory overview on IBD, its diagnosis and the difficulties in sometimes reaching confirmation of IBD or making a definitive diagnosis as to whether it is Crohn's, or colitis. Symptoms and presenting features of childhood IBD are fully described, with information about the laboratory and diagnostic tests undertaken explained. Possible causes and diseases that resemble IBD are also outlined.

Part 2 covers the treatment of IBD, including all the medical and surgical therapies employed, how to deal with specific problems such as symptoms, both bowel and from extra-intestinal manifestations, and the complications that can develop in IBD. The chapter concerning the role of diet contains useful recipes and calorie-packing foods for when dietary supplementation is needed, as well as information on the different types of tube feeding and TPN (delivery of nutrients directly into the blood), and how and when these need to be employed. Further information is given in a following chapter about how to treat slow growth through nutrition and deals with the particular problem of growth impairment and delay in sexual maturity, an issue not relevant to adults with IBD.

Part 3 gives some insight into the thoughts of children with IBD who were interviewed and helpful advice on how to reassure your child, along with examples of how parents can help their children cope, is also given. Chapters dealing with day to day activities and issues, such as school, camp and also family life, offers important advice in relation to the support of teachers, toilet facilities and medications at school, dating and socialising, the pressure on siblings, communicating with family and friends, as well as adjusting to life with IBD. The topic of pregnancy and IBD questions and answers for young patients form the final chapters.

A special section devotes information to resources, a glossary of terms, and a guide to IBD medications. Diagrams are also shown throughout the book.

No family with a young person with IBD should go without reading this excellent publication.