The pattern of lower gastrointestinal disease in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia: a retrospective analysis of 1590 consecutive patients.

To determine the pattern of lower gastrointestinal disease in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia we analysed 1907 colorectal biopsies obtained from 1590 consecutive patients (1256 males & 334 females), evaluated during a 13 year period (1983-1996) in a tertiary care teaching hospital. The age range was 6-81 years with a mean of 37 + 15. During the same period 6874 new patients were seen in the Gastroenterology Clinics. Saudi Arabs constituted 970 (61 %) of all patients. The remaining 620 (39%) were non-Saudi, mostly of Arab origin from neighbouring countries. The most common presenting symptom for referral was abdominal pain (1193 patients, 75%) followed by diarrhea (636 patients, 40%). The most frequent histologic diagnosis was a normal mucosa followed by non specific proctocolitis accounting respectively for 37.9% and 37.4% of all cases. These were followed by schistosomiasis, 113 (7.1%), adenocarcinoma, 91 (5.7%) and ulcerative colitis, 91 cases with a relative frequency of 5.7% and a calculated prevalence of 1.3%. Of significance was the encounter of 14 cases of Crohn's disease amounting to 0.9% of all cases with a calculated prevalence of 0.2%. A minority of 83 patients (5.2%) were cases of either a benign polyp, diverticular disease, tuberculosis, ischaemia, lymphoma, pseudomembranous colitis (PMC), eosinophilic gastroenteritis or malacoplakia. These data show that although a "normal mucosa" and "nonspecific proctocolitis" were the dominant diagnoses, significantly, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease exist and should be considered in the differential diagnosis of lower GI disease.