How often is uc/crohn's/celiac disease initially misdiagnosed?

Just curious. I've heard time-to-time of somebody being initially diagnosed as uc, and then later being diagnosed as having Crohn's disease or Celiac disease (glutton intolerance). Is it all that common? Certainly, there is a lot of similarity in the symptoms among those diseases: abdominal pain, gas, diarrhea, weight loss, fatigue, and so forth.

If it were diagnosed by c-scope, I think the incidence of Celiac disease or gluten intolerance being misdiagnosed as UC would be pretty low. Unless I'm mistaken, Celiac disease affects the small intestine, so if one has Celiac disease, the colon should look fine. And I don't think gluten intolerance could cause inflammation/ulceration in the colon.

That said, I think it's entirely possible for a person to have both UC and Celiac disease or gluten intolerance, and until the both problems are addressed, the person isn't going to achieve absence of symptoms.

As for CD vs UC diagnosis, that can often be tricky as the diseases are similar in many, many ways. It's often hard to clearly distinguish between the two, as both cause inflammation and ulceration.

The risk of misdiagnosis UC vs Crohn's is kind of a separate category from UV vs Celiac.

If it is Crohn's Colitis (only in colon) it is hard to distinguish from UC, except that the ulcerations go a bit deeper. The import is that colonectomy will stop UC, but colectomy does not prevent Crohn's colitis form moving into the small intestine.

Regarding Celiac, fruitgirl makes sense, there are overlapping symptoms, but mot necessarily the colon ulcerations. Then there is gluten intolerance/sensitivity. This may predate UC and be sub-clinical for Celiac, but IMO it is commonly a secondary condition of UC. We need certain gut microbes to help us digest some foods like glutin. With UC there is generally profound depletion of the gut microbes, either as cause ro consequence or both. This can produce an intolerance; it might also come and go with flares.

All this said, if bloodwork and scoping (w/ biopsies) are done, diagnoses are generally accurate. You will of course hear the stories of those who got misdiagnosed because all the steps were not done, or just because individual cases vary enough that sometimes the most careful diagnoses need to be reconsidered.