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Jellyfish are aquatic organisms, whose number increases under certain conditions of water temperature. They can sting humans, which can be fatal. The liberation of structures known as nematocysts induces the extrusion of the poison, to attack their victims. The poison produces characteristic local and systemic reactions. Since an increased number of these organisms has been detected in our coastline, we review the epidemiology, symptoms and diagnosis of the syndrome produced by the bite, to improve its management.

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Determining the diagnosis of Crohn's disease has been highly difficult mainly during the first years of this study carried out at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica (PUC) Clinical Hospital. For instance, it has been frequently confused with Irritable bowel syndrome and sometimes misdiagnosed as ulcerative colitis, infectious colitis or enterocolitis, intestinal lymphoma, or coeliac disease. Consequently, it seems advisable to characterize what the most relevant clinical features are, in order to establish a clear concept of Crohn's disease. This difficulty may still be a problem at other medical centers in developing countries. Thus, sharing this information may contribute to a better understanding of this disease. Based on the clinical experience gained between 1963 and 2004 and reported herein, the main clinical characteristics of the disease are long-lasting day and night abdominal pain, which becomes more intense after eating and diarrhoea, sometimes associated to a mass in the abdomen, anal lesions, and other additional digestive and nondigestive clinical features. Nevertheless, the main aim of this work has been the following: is it possible to make, in an early stage, the diagnosis of Crohn's disease with a high degree of certainty exclusively with clinical data?

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