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Eric Dozois, M.D., Colon and Rectal Surgeon: Inflammatory bowel disease is made up really of two separate conditions. One is ulcerative colitis and the other is Crohn's disease. Our goal is actually to avoid surgery if we can.

Surgery would be reserved for patients that don't tolerate medical therapy or fail medical therapy and that's when we come in and say, here's a surgical solution to this problem because you've now failed medical therapy. And so in that situation, surgery can be a great benefit for patients.

One advantage for patients to come to a center like Mayo Clinic is that they see both medical colleagues in gastroenterology that have a lot of experience managing the medical side of their condition, and also surgeons that have a lot of experience managing the surgical problems when it's necessary. And so working together with the patient at the center of that allows us to really do what's best for patients.

When a patient comes to us that needs surgery, we talk about what are the goals of the surgery. The goal is improvement in quality of life and to try to do it with a safe operation that gets them to enjoy all the things in their life that they want to enjoy.

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March 03, 2026