Balloon dilation

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Other then hearing about this procedure I have no experience with it, hopefull someone can chime in soon and give you more information. There are many types of balloon dilations, so just to be sure he had it done somewhere in his GI tract, not sinus or blood vessel?
 
Hi Silke, I'm due to have my first balloon dilation next Tuesday so I'd lke to hear other peoples experiences too. I have a 1.2cm fibrotic stricture in my terminal ileum.

How did your husband get on with the dilations?

I have a couple of questions for anyone who has had a balloon dilation. Does the dilation hurt? Did you notice any relief, and how long did it last?
 
I have crohns and my wife has Colitis. I haven't had this but my wife has 2-3 time a few years ago. They only help for a limited time then she had a ilyostomy (she had a "J pouch before) It didn't really help much for her. There was far to much scar tissue.

I hope this helps.

Jim (POPS)
 
They were going to do that for my TI stricture until they found a lot more problems north of there.

My Doc, whom I trust a lot, says it's a piece of cake IF they can get the scope into the stricture well. It's basically the same procedure for blood vessels when they want to open them.

Everyone in my area uses light anesthesia for colonoscopy, so we are asleep for the procedure so wouldn't feel a thing. I've read on here several that were awake. OMG, you brave folks. Did that once years ago, and never again!

I personally would not hesitate to get that done, I had HOPED to get it done instead of my current care.

Good Luck!
 
SarahD, the balloon dilation is done via a colonoscopy and in Australia they do it under sedation. Have you had one before? If so you will know that the worst bit is the purging of your system beforehand to clean the bowel out. Just unpleasant really. My husband was surprisingly well after the (day) procedure the first time last year but felt awful for a week or so due to the flagyl antibiotic he was prescribed to prevent any subsequent infection. So this time we insisted on a different antibiotic and that was better. What he experienced this time was a quite a bit of gas pain afterwards and so they kept him in for a few hours but it soon settled and I took him home. (They pump air into the bowel to expand it.) For the next few days he felt tender inside but not too bad and after a few days it went away so plan to take it easy for a few days. He has one small but tight stricture in the terminal ileum and no crohns elsewhere. He had an 8 inch section of the ileum removed in 2000 .
We have decided with our specialist that in Daves case we will do this procedure every 6 months as a preventative to stop it from closing up completely and we do think it has helped. The alternative is surgery and compared to that this is a cinch!
P.S. They expanded his stricture from a pinhole to 18mm then the second time to 15 mm. But from what we can understand it hadn't actually changed much in the 6 months. So we think it is well worth doing. GOOD LUCK XXXXXXX0000000
 

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