Diarrhea, from the gastroenterologist’s point of view

Abstract

Patients seeking help from gastroenterologist have frequent complaints of changes in the quality and quantity of stool as well in the frequency of bowel movements. Definition of diarrhea includes: more than three bowel movements daily, more than 200 grams of the stool daily, and its water content exceeding 75-85%. Diarrhea lowers the quality of life and can be a sign of organic disease. Its course can be acute and chronic. According to the pathomechanism, diarrheas can be divided into four different types: exudative (inflammatory), osmotic, dismotility and secretory. Acute diarrheas are usually infective, and sometimes they result in very serious conditions. Their course runs from a few days to a couple of weeks. If diarrhea persists more than four weeks, it is the chronic variant and it justifies gastroenterological examination. During the evaluation, we have to think of endocrine, autoimmune, allergic, postoperative states and the side effect of medications beside primer gastroenterological causes. To differentiate from a number of wide scale of clinical pictures and to reach the correct diagnosis, we are aided by the characteristics of diarrhea, the accompanying symptoms, laboratory values and invasive examinations. With the present summary, we would like to give a guide to the practicing physicians, mainly with a symptom-oriented approach.