Histopathological Spectrum of Regional Enteritis

Abstract

Since Crohn's original description,¹ the histopathologic criteria for the diagnosis of regional enteritis have not been conspicuously altered. Despite technical refinements and search for specificity of various histologic parameters^2-9 in the disease, it may be said that there are no pathognomonic features in regional enteritis. This is predicated upon the following: (1) the small intestine has, in the majority of instances, a restricted mode of reactivity to various and diverse agents; (2) regional enteritis is a progressive disease with a fluidity of transition between various histopathologic changes; and (3) the appearance of the intestine, at any given time during the clinical course of the disease, is a composite of "primary" and "secondary" reactions with obscuration of the primary lesion by the latter in the progression of biologic time.⁵ The sequence of morphologic changes occurring in regional enteritis may then be considered to represent a spectrum with considerable