Strictures
Healing in the body is usually a good thing. When the body heals itself, it covers its wounds with scar tissue to strengthen the areas that were previously damaged.
The human body has limits and thus a scar is never a perfect replication of the tissue that used to be there before the injury. It’s often a somewhat hard, rough area where the body fuses its flesh back together.
The digestive tract is designed to expand and contract in a process known as peristalsis, which pushes the food through your system. Scar tissue is hard and not flexible like normal tissue, so it can’t do the job as easily.
Since Crohn’s disease affects every layer of the digestive tract, inflammation that heals within the ‘tubes’ of your intestines can form rings of hard scar tissue that tighten and limit the passage of food matter. As these rings form additional layers of scarring, the pathways constrict and make Crohn’s sufferers prone to intestinal blockages.
Strictures can be treated with the normal means of medication, through surgery, or other procedures like balloon dilation.
Strictures are named and specified by their location in the body - an esophageal stricture occurs before the stomach, a duodenal stricture in the first portion of the small intestine, an ileocecal stricture between the connection of the small bowel to the large bowel, etc.