Clinical presentation of diseases of the large bowel. A detailed study of 642 patients.

This paper presents in detail the symptomatology and findings on examination of 642 patients suffering from a variety of lower gastrointestinal disorders, such as colonic and rectal cancer, diverticular disease, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis. Location of precise sites of abdominal pain and tenderness was shown to carry a high level of diagnostic discrimination between the various disorders. Some surprising features emerged: almost half of patients with lower gastrointestinal tract disease complained of symptoms referable to the upper gastrointestinal tract, such as nausea/vomiting or anorexia. It is suggested that the provision on demand of such data to junior staff may benefit both diagnostic ability and decision making. As an incidental finding, just under 40% of patients with large bowel cancer had undergone previous (unrelated) abdominal surgery. The significance of this is unclear.