Is it safe to have a colonoscopy during a severe flare?

I am usually in pretty bad shape and still had colonoscopies. Sometimes the trials I was in required day 0 and day 28 scopes. But, the only time I refused was after I hemorrhaged. I had already lost half my blood and was scared to be poked. At that time we did a CT instead. Hope that helps!

My husband had 2 sigmoidoscopes and 2 colonoscopies, in addition to 3 cat scans when he was in the hospital. They needed biospies to try and figure out if it was c-diff causing problems, or if it was Ulcerative Colitis (his original diagnosis), and the biopsies helped determine that he was actually positive for crohn's.

The doc did say that he stopped the colonoscopy the moment he saw the very bad inflammation in my husband's colon - he just picked up a few biopsy samples, and got the heck out of there - that was the first colonoscopy. After that, he only did another colonoscopy when his colon was doing better - not back to normal, but there was some improvement, and he still didn't go any further - just stopped at the transverse colon where he saw the inflammation. I think if your doc is careful, a colonoscopy can be a good test to diagnose your situation.

They do also rely on CAT scans when colonoscopies are risky - that's what our doc did. If he didn't absolutely need those biopsies, I doubt very much he'd have gone in. But in either case, as long as your doc uses good judgement, you should be fine even with a colonoscopy.

My last colonoscopy actually is what brought to light the severe level of inflammation I was having at the ime. Sometimes, that's the only way they know.