Ľubomír Tomáš
Crohn‘s disease and ulcerative colitis are the main representatives of idiopathic inflammatory bowel diseases. Dominantly they affect digestive tract, but have many systemic extraintestinal manifestations. At present the cardiovascular manifestations are leading ones. The data about their type and incidence are varied. Although some of them are frequent, they are usually asymptomatic. The typical examples are pericarditis and myocarditis. More important problem is ischaemic heart disease and other arterial and particularly venous thromboembolic diseases. Their incidence is increasing with age, but paradoxically, the most endangered are young patients with active disease, especially in stages of relapse and persisting activity of inflammatory bowel diseases. The risk of these events is decreasing to the level similar to common population after induction of remission by effective antiinflammatory therapy.