Rectal bleeding
Rectal bleeding can occur for various reasons. Whatever the cause is, it is always good to meet your doctor if you notice blood or any changes in the color of the stool. You should not depend on self-diagnosis, particularly if the symptom persists for long. This can help avoid the barriers for a proper care needed by a patient.
Recent studies for evaluating and studying the barriers and limitations for care of patients due to rectal bleeding
A clinical study that got completed recently and titled “Barriers to Care in Patients with Rectal Bleeding in Nigeria” studies health-seeking behavior and barriers to care in patients who suffer with blood in stool in Nigeria.This study tried to find link between health seeking behavior of patients who suffer with bleeding from rectum and their risk to develop colorectal cancer and also to evaluate the general practitioner’s perceived barriers to colonoscopy for patients who suffer with bleeding.
Patients who had hematochezia were invited to electronic media and print media for free medical consultation. Consented patients completed a purposely design questionnaire for the study to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of patient with rectal bleeding as far as the possibility of occurrence of colorectal cancer is concerned. The results of the study have not yet been posted. It is hoped that the study will provide information about patients’ knowledge of the causes of rectal bleeding and their attitudes towards seeking expert opinion for possible diagnostic testing for colorectal cancer (CRC).
Rectal bleeding is a very common clinical sign. It is often caused by haemorrhoids also. In fact, one of the ways hemorrhoids are identified is blood in stool. But, there are little data elements about patients with hemorrhoids and who suffer rectal bleeding.
In a recent study, all consecutive patients with haemorrhoids and rectal bleeding, seen in a period of 5 years at the endoscopy department of the Zaans Medisch Centrum, the community hospital of the Zaanstreek region in the Netherlands, were studied. It was seen that with an increasing age, more coincidental pathology other than haemorrhoids was found. One of them was diverticuli of the colon. Irritable bowel disease (IBD) occurs more often in younger patients with haemorrhoids. Colorectal cancer was only found in patients >50 years.
The clinical trial shows that patients with haemorrhoids can have other causes of bleeding too. Haemorrhoids can easily be identified and thus blamed for rectal bleeding, and this can lead to a doctor’s delay. This disturbs the care that patients need in chronic or life-threatening diseases.
A total of 30k+ respondents over the age of 40 years completed a questionnaire in a study. The proportion of individuals with no contact to the doctor varied between 69.8% and 79.8% for rectal bleeding and blood in stool frequency, respectively. The most widely reported barriers were being worried about wasting the doctor’s time and being too busy to make time to meet the doctor. Men with bleeding in the rectum more often reported as being worried about what the doctor might identify as the reason for the presence of blood in their stool. The proportion of individuals who reported barriers was, in general, higher among the youngest age group in this study.
