If you have Crohn’s disease, will you die? As a specialist with many years of clinical experience, I must answer responsibly: as long as a person is human, there is a day when he or she will come to the end, and the same is true for Crohn’s disease patients. If you ask me, is the mortality rate higher than normal when you have Crohn’s disease? Then I will answer properly. Crohn’s disease (CD) is a lifelong and slow disease, and many patients develop various complications, such as gastrointestinal bleeding, perforation, fistula, obstruction, etc. A few patients may be combined with cancer, and these complications may be life-threatening if they are very serious. In addition, the side effects of treatment drugs or other organ diseases caused by the disease itself may also involve life. Back in 2006, the first article on mortality investigation of CD patients was published in GUT, a prestigious journal of gastroenterology, which investigated the mortality of 380 CD patients in Europe diagnosed between 1991 and 1993 10 years later and found that compared to normal subjects, CD patients with colonic involvement or significant inflammation at the time of onset had increased mortality, with the main cause of death being gastrointestinal complications; age >40 years at diagnosis was an independent correlate. Incidentally, this issue is also mentioned here for ulcerative colitis (UC), while another study on ulcerative colitis in 2007 found no significant difference in mortality in patients with ulcerative colitis compared to normal subjects. a 2013 meta-analysis article analyzing 35 mortality-related articles on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD, including UC and CD) concluded that patients with UC and CD have increased mortality compared to normal subjects, with cancer, lung disease and nonalcoholic liver disease as the main causes. The results of these scientific articles may be worrisome to you, such as the issue of carcinoma. Outpatient clinics have seen many young patients who start to fear cancerous disease early in life. Of course, there is no denying that patients with inflammatory bowel disease have a higher incidence of cancer than the normal population, especially those who are at severe and long-term risk. Chronic inflammatory irritation can lead to an increased incidence of cancer, as is the case in both ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, with the former being more common. Therefore, various surveillance for cancer prevention has been and is clinically emphasized (watch for the next to IBD cancer-related science articles). However, this does not mean that IBD patients need to calculate their 5 or 10 year survival period from time to time like tumor patients, and with the progress of technology and the continuous development of various drugs, the prognosis of IBD patients continues to improve. Still this prestigious journal GUT has just published a Norwegian article in 2014 which gives us important hints and I myself was encouraged to read the article. This scientific study investigated 237 patients with CD starting in 1990 and followed them for 20 years and compared the causes of death in the study patients and the normal population and found that there was no elevated rate of death from disease or cancer in CD compared to the general population. The article says that although there are some problems during the active phase of the disease, CD does not lead to an increase in mortality for up to 20 years after the diagnosis is established. Of course, this article is monitoring patients in Norway, where medical care is notoriously good, and the patients there are not fully representative of our patients in China. However, this conclusion tells us that the prognosis of CD patients is not very poor as long as they receive good and early treatment. On the contrary, caring for patients’ quality of life and paying attention to how well they live with the disease are important elements that physicians need to pay close attention to in their treatment. Therefore, here I would like to say to everyone, do not be overly afraid of your future. The most important thing is to do what you need to do now – to control the disease activity to the maximum extent possible. The better the disease is controlled, the better the prognosis will be. By discussing the disease and your concerns with your specialist, treating it properly, following up well, and monitoring your endoscopy regularly, you can take maximum control of your future.