What Can Be The Cause Of Chronic Diarrhea – Diarrhea is a common health problem that affects 179 million people in the United States each year. Severe diarrhea does not last long, about 1 to 2 days, but can last for a long time and then go away on its own.
Diarrhea that lasts more than a few days can be a serious problem. If diarrhea lasts four weeks or more, it is considered chronic or persistent.
What Can Be The Cause Of Chronic Diarrhea
Call your doctor right away if you see blood in your stool, lose weight, have a fever, or have severe pain, or if you suspect you may be dehydrated or malabsorbed.
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Diarrhea can also cause malabsorption, when your body can’t digest the healthy parts of food. Symptoms include:
A gastroenterologist may perform tests to determine why you have chronic diarrhea before diagnosing irritable bowel syndrome and diarrhea (IBS-D).
Depending on how severe your symptoms are, you may need other tests, such as a colonoscopy to look inside your colon.
If you have recently traveled abroad, additional tests may be required depending on your location.
Diarrhea: Common Causes And How To Treat It
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a health problem that manifests itself in your gut (bowel). There are three types of IBS: irritable bowel with diarrhea (IBS-D), irritable bowel with constipation (IBS-C), and mixed irritable bowel (IBS-M).
Although the cause of irritable bowel syndrome is unknown, it can be treated. Irritable bowel syndrome is a common health problem that affects more than 35 million Americans.
IBS can affect you physically, emotionally and socially. Most people with IBS can control their symptoms with diet, stress management, and the occasional medication prescribed by their doctor.
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If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website, you will need to enable or disable cookies again. Although they are fairly common (3 to 5 percent of the population), they are a serious diagnostic problem, with several hundred cases in the differential diagnosis.
Chronic diarrhea must be defined as watery (secretory or osmotic or active), seborrheic, or inflammatory before a complete diagnostic evaluation.
Most people with irritable bowel syndrome who meet the Rome III criteria do not need a colonoscopy if the condition responds to treatment.
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Faecal calprotectin, a marker of neutrophil activity, is useful in differentiating inflammatory bowel disease from irritable bowel and monitoring IBD activity.
Screening for celiac disease should be considered in patients with irritable bowel syndrome, type 1 diabetes, thyroid disease, iron deficiency anemia, weight loss, infertility, high liver transaminase levels, and chronic fatigue.
Chronic diarrhea can be divided into three main categories: water, fat (malabsorption), and inflammation (blood and pus). However, not all types of chronic diarrhea have hard water, malabsorption, or inflammation because some categories overlap. Differential diagnosis of chronic diarrhea is described in Table 1.
Watery diarrhea can be divided into osmotic (retention of water due to poor absorption of substances), excretory (decreased water absorption) and active type (hypermotility).
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Osmotic laxatives such as sorbitol cause osmotic diarrhea. Secretive diarrhea can be distinguished from osmotic and functional diarrhea by an increase in the volume of stool (more than 1 L per day), which persists despite fasting and occurs at night. Stimulant laxatives fall into this secret category because they increase motility.
People with functional disorders have small stools (less than 350 ml per day), no nocturnal diarrhea.
History is an important first step in diagnosis. It is important to understand exactly what patients mean when they say they have diarrhea. The patient may not have diarrhea, but enuresis caused by feces.
Stool size, frequency, and consistency can help differentiate diarrhea, as mentioned earlier. Travel history is important. Travel to the tropics greatly expands the list of diagnostic possibilities, but excludes common causes. Bloody diarrhea after a trip to Africa may be ulcerative colitis rather than amoebic dysentery.
Medical Conditions That Causes Bloody Diarrhea
A physical examination provides additional clues to the cause of the diarrhea. Recent weight loss or lymphadenopathy may be caused by chronic infection or malignancy. Ocular findings such as vasculitis or exophthalmos suggest that diarrhea is caused by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and hyperthyroidism, respectively. Dermatitis herpetiformis, an itchy rash, occurs in 15-25 percent of celiac patients.
Abdominal examination for scarring (surgical causes of diarrhea), bowel sounds (increased motility), tenderness (infection and inflammation), and formations (tumors) should be followed by a rectal examination, including a stool test for occult blood. An anal fistula indicates Crohn’s disease. A quick office endoscopy can reveal ulcers or a disturbed stool. Such abnormalities are a common cause of pseudodiarrhea or paradoxical diarrhea, which is actually discharge around a broken stool.
Basic blood tests may include a complete blood count, albumin level, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, liver function test, thyroid-stimulating hormone level, and electrolyte level. Iron deficiency anemia can be an indicator of celiac disease and requires testing.
A routine stool test should include a fecal leukocyte count and a fecal occult blood test with additional tests as indicated. Fecal calprotectin, a marker of neutrophil activity, is very useful in the diagnosis of IBD. C. difficile poisoning should be diagnosed as a result of diarrhea after hospitalization or antibiotic use. If abuse is suspected, a stool softener (eg, sodium, potassium, magnesium, phosphate, sulfate, phenolphthalein, bisacodyl [Dulcolax]) should be prescribed.
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Special stool tests may be used to diagnose malabsorption, including a stool oil test or Sudan oil stain.
A stool pH test is quick and can be done in the clinic if the patient is not taking antibiotics. At least 0.5 ml of stool is collected, a strip of nitrosin paper is dipped into the sample and compared with the calorimeter. A pH below 5.5 indicates an acidic sample and may indicate lactose intolerance. Cellular electrolyte levels can be used to differentiate between secretory and osmotic diarrhea. Although testing of stool pH and stool electrolyte levels is useful, it is often not done at initial use. Abnormal laboratory results help distinguish between active and inactive disease.
Travel risk factors may warrant stool culture and allergy testing, stool oocyst and parasite testing, and Giardia and Cryptosporidium antigen testing. Giardia and cryptosporidial infections are easily missed by testing for oocysts and parasites, although acid-fast staining of stool indicates Cryptosporidium. Finally, a sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy is often required to establish a specific diagnosis. Microscopic colitis can only be diagnosed with a colon biopsy.
If it is necessary to separate the fluid from other stages of diarrhea, a 24-hour stool collection can determine the amount of stool produced.
Why Do People Get Diarrhea?
Many causes of chronic diarrhea are often difficult to diagnose and treat. In many cases, classification by type of diarrhea makes a lot of sense before testing and treatment to narrow down the list of diagnostic possibilities and reduce the number of unnecessary tests.
First, physicians must determine whether the diarrhea can be classified as watery, fatty, or inflammatory, and then select a specific test to determine the smallest difference between each category (Figure 1).
Investigational treatment may be warranted when a particular diagnosis is highly suspected or resources are limited. It is necessary to exclude life-threatening conditions. A trial of metronidazole (Flagyl) for malabsorption in travelers will treat possible giardiasis. Similarly, a screening test for bile acid resins can help confirm bile acid malabsorption.
Patients who have undergone experimental treatment should be followed up because the patient may not improve or may improve only initially, only after relapse.
The Investigation Of Chronic Diarrhoea: New Bsg Guidance
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is the most common cause of functional diarrhea in developed countries. Irritable bowel syndrome is a group of symptoms of throbbing abdominal pain associated with changes in bowel habits, either diarrhea or constipation. Watery diarrhea usually occurs when you wake up, usually after eating. Discomfort is relieved during defecation, some patients have mucus discharge.
Women are diagnosed twice as often as men. “Warning” symptoms such as nocturnal diarrhea, severe pain, weight loss, or blood in the stool indicate a different diagnosis.
IBS is aggravated by emotional stress or food, but it can also be a reaction to a recent infection. Symptoms of IBS after traveler’s diarrhea (post-infectious IBS) may last for several months despite poor performance.
Although IBS is often considered a diagnosis of exclusion, there is no need to carefully evaluate young, healthy patients who meet the Rome III criteria if they respond to fiber, exercise, and dietary modification. Screening for celiac disease and iron deficiency anemia is recommended, but routine colonoscopy is not necessary unless worrisome symptoms appear.
Why Acute Diarrhea And Chronic Diarrhea?
Screening for celiac disease is warranted because people with IBS may develop celiac disease four times more often than the general population.
Symptoms of recurrent abdominal pain or discomfort and significant changes in bowel habits for at least six months, symptoms present at least three days per month for at least three months. Two or more of the following must apply:
Inflammatory bowel disease can present as ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease. Both often cause blood and pus in the stool, which indicates an infection
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