THE PREVALENCE OF INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASES IN THE REGION OF GOSTIVAR DURING THE PERIOD OF 2018-2022

Lifestyle, especially nutrition, has changed over the centuries, tending to the consumption of fast foods, unhealthy lifestyles that increase the risk of many different diseases. This is expressed by the high incidence and prevalence of many chronic and acute diseases, which in different populations around the world are of different degrees. Nowadays, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are the first diseases that have a high mortality rate, while inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract cannot be overlooked, which occupy the third place in terms of mortality rate. The aim of this paper consists in describing the pathology of inflammatory bowel diseases, presenting statistical data for cases with inflammatory bowel diseases in the region of Gostivar, in the 5-year period from 2018 to 2022. The main objectives of this paper is the identification of cases with two main inflammatory bowel diseases: ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, pathological description, determination of prevalence, etiology, clinical diagnosis and drug treatment of these disorders, incidence of these disorders by gender and age groups affected by ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. From the total number of 376 examined patients, for the period of 5 years, from 2018 to 2022, sick with inflammatory bowel diseases were of age 15-82. In the population included in the research, we can conclude from the data analysis in the 5-year period, according to gender, men have a higher prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (one of the factors may be smoking), while it belongs to age. group is the age group from 31 to 50 years old. Regarding the form of inflammatory bowel disease, in the population included in the research, 44% of patients were diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, compared to 23% of patients with Crohn's disease.