Background Crohn’s disease (CD) is associated with the emergence of complications, including intra-abdominal abscess. Management is multidisciplinary based on close medical-surgical collaboration. The aim of the study was to evaluate the clinical characteristics, the efficacy of different therapeutic options of intra-abdominal abscess in CD patients and to identify predictive factors of a favorable response. Methods Medical records of 56 CD patients who had intra-abdominal abscess were retrospectively reviewed. Patients with postoperative abscess were excluded. Clinical, biological and therapeutic data were retrospectively assessed. Treatment progression was appreciated.IBM SPSS software 21.0 was used for statistical analysis of our data. Results In total, 897 patients were identified as having CD in the study period, 56 of them developed intra-abdominal abscess. Means that the prevalence of intra-abdominal abscess in CD patients was 6,2%. Mean age was 35,24 ± 11,6 years old with a sex ratio M/F 0,64. 47,3% had penetrating CD. 50.9% of our patients were known to be carriers of Crohn’s disease, 45% of whom were on 5-ASA, while the remaining patients 49.1% (n = 26), the abscess was inaugural and revealing of the CD.The clinical signs were dominated by pain in 80%, the abscess was localised mainly at the right iliac fossa in 77.7% of cases. Median size of collection was 3,8 ± 2 cm. There were 47,3% patients who had fistula associated to abscess. The initial reactive C protein ranged from 14 to 320 (median 58.3) mg/L. All patients had first-line treatment based on broad-spectrum bi-antibiotic therapy, alone in 25.5%, combined with surgical resection in 45.5%, surgical abscess drainage without resection in 23,6% or guided by imaging in 5.5%, the initial success was 71.7%. 28.3% of patients underwent surgery for initial treatment failure, which was dominated by ileocecal resection in 53.1%. Overall success was 92.3%, only one death was noted following postoperative release with peritonitis. Predictive factor of favorable response was: fistula associated with intra-abdominal abscess (p =0.03) and surgical resection seems to be the best therapeutic option (p < 0,001). Conclusion Intra-abdominal abscess is a complication of Crohn’s disease (CD) mainly penetrating, in almost half of the cases, it can reveal CD. Our study showed that the presence of fistula appears to be significantly associated with therapeutic success and the best results are obtained in the case of surgical resection.