Colonoscopic and histopathological findings in patients with various lower gastrointestinal symptoms : a single-center experience

Abstract EN

Background : Early diagnosis of lower gastrointestinal (GI) diseases constitutes a challenge.

While colonoscopy helps in the detection of these diseases ; histopathological analysis of obtained biopsies is of greater importance.

Aim : This study aimed at the identification of colonic lesions associated with common lower GI manifestations based on colonoscopy and histopathological examination of biopsies.

Materials and Methods: In a retrospective cross-sectional study, we included medical records of 710 patients involving their personal, clinical, endoscopic, and pathological data.

Included data were of patients who presented with lower GI manifestations, and underwent colonoscopy and biopsy taking in the period from January 2016 to June 2020.

Results: The most found pathology was non-specific chronic colitis (NSCC) (59.7%), followed by malignancy 19.3 %) then inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (15.6 %), hyper plastic inflammatory polyp in 3.7 %.

Meanwhile, bilharzial colitis was diagnosed in 1.3 % of patients.

Significant predictors of both NSCC and malignancy were advanced age (<0.001), diabetes, hypertension, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and bloody diarrhea.

In addition, bleeding per rectum and weight loss were also found to be specific predictors in malignancy.

The only predictors of IBD were abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea and weight loss.

Conclusions: NSCC, malignancy, and IBD are the most common causes of lower GI manifestations.

Moreover, clinical predictors of these diseases are useful in the early diagnosis and management of colonic lesions.