Infectious Colitis: Diagnosis and Treatment

Abstract

Generally, the term infectious colitis is the same with the term infective colitis. Infective or infectious colitis can be defined as colon inflammation due to infections or infectious organism. In Indonesia the most frequent cause of acute or chronic colitis is still infections. From researches, we know that the frequent cause of infective colitis were bacterias (pathogenic Escherichia coli, Clostridium difficile, Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, etc), parasites (Entamoeba histolytica), helminth (Trichuriasis, Strongiloides, etc). Most infections of these causes are food borne illnesses or food poisoning. The clinical manifestations of infective or infectious colitis are fever, abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation, bloating etc. Diagnosis of infective colitis is made by history taking (anamnesis), physical examination, supporting laboratories (blood, stool), and colonoscopy/sigmoidoscopy examination. From the history we can have a history which the patient contacted the infected people, recent mountain camping or travel abroad, drinking unpurified water, eating raw meat, seafood, or unhygienic food preparation, recent uses of antibiotics. Bloody diarrhea, fever and tenesmus (pain on defecation) are the clue for inflammatory enterocolitis or systemic disease. Physical examination can find abnormalities such as dehydration, hyperactive bowel sounds, abdominal tenderness etc. The findings that showed dehydration are dry mucous membranes, sunken eyes, decreased skin tension (turgor), lethargy, increased heart rate, decreased blood pressure, etc. Supporting examination which can be performed is stool examination (macroscopic and microscopic examination) three times, stool’s culture. The gold standard to diagnose infectious colitis is still by colonoscopy and histopathologic examination (biopsy). The sensitivity and specificity of Infectious Colitis: Diagnosis and Treatment