Capsule retention in Crohn's disease requiring surgical management: two case reports.
Capsule endoscopy can be helpful for small-bowel assessment in Crohn’s disease but carries a risk of retention when strictures are present. Retained capsules may be asymptomatic yet still require surgery, so better pre-procedure screening can reduce that risk.
Patients with Crohn’s disease (particularly with known or suspected strictures); gastroenterologists and colorectal surgeons; care teams ordering capsule endoscopy.
What To Know
What To Know These two case reports describe asymptomatic capsule endoscopy retention in patients with established Crohn’s disease where cross-sectional imaging did not predict significant small-bowel stenosis.
In both patients the retained capsule was confirmed radiologically after about 2 weeks, corticosteroid treatment did not lead to passage, and surgery (resection or stricturoplasty) was required to retrieve the capsule and treat the strictures.
The reports emphasize pre-procedure risk stratification: use cross-sectional imaging routinely and consider patency capsule testing when available for patients at risk of small-bowel stenosis. Multidisciplinary planning is important because retained capsules can be clinically silent yet require surgical management.
These are surgical case reports summarizing individual patient courses; they do not provide comparative outcomes or rates of retention.
Who Should Pay Attention Patients with Crohn’s disease, especially those with known or suspected stricturing disease; gastroenterologists and surgeons who use capsule endoscopy; and care teams planning diagnostic strategies for small-bowel evaluation. Keep In Mind This brief is grounded in the article abstract (case reports).
Case reports illustrate possibilities but do not quantify how often capsule retention occurs or predict outcomes for all patients. The authors recommend patency capsule testing when available and routine cross-sectional imaging for risk assessment, but local practice and test availability vary.
Structured content depth is abstract from the Journal of Surgical Case Reports. These are two individual case reports and do not provide generalizable rates or comparative effectiveness data. Patency capsule testing availability and cross-sectional imaging accuracy vary by center.
