ABSTRACT
Nutritional supplementation, in the form of low residue liquid polymeric diets, produces improvement in anthropometric measurements and clinical and laboratory indices of disease activity. This beneficial effect is especially valuable in children in whom both active disease and high-dose steroid treatment stunt growth. Oral corticosteroids are much cheaper, more convenient, and certainly more palatable than elemental diet, and will no doubt continue to be the preferred initial option for most patients. This chapter presents study to compare the therapeutic effect of two enteral feeds in patients with Crohn's disease ill enough to otherwise require steroids. The two feeds were given in isocaloric quantities. In this study in acutely ill patients with Crohn's disease, a polymeric diet was not an effective alternative to an elemental diet. Only 36% of the patients in the polymeric group entered remission, compared with 75% in the elemental diet group.
