What are the Endoscopic and Pathological Characteristics of Colorectal Polyps?

Abstract

<b>Background:</b> Colon polyps need to be excised upon detection during colonoscopy due to the risk of malignancyirrespective of their size. In our study, we retrospectively evaluated the clinicopathological characteristics ofpolyps detected during colonoscopy. Materials and <br/><b>Methods</b>: We assessed 379 patients with polyps detectedduring colonoscopy between January 2010 and May 2012. The demographics, complaints, colonoscopy findings(shape, place and size of the polyp) and histopathological findings were recorded. We carried out statisticalanalysis using PASW 18.0 for Windows. <br/><b>Results</b>: There were 227 males (59.9%) and 152 females (40.1%) in thetrial. The mean age was 53.8 years (32-90). The most common complaint was rectal bleeding (36.1%), followedby abdominal pain (35.4%). Polyps were detected most commonly in the rectosigmoid region (43.8%), followedby the descending colon (17.4%). Some 239 patients had a single polyp (63.1%) while 140 were found to havemultiple polyps (36.9%). While tubular adenoma was the most common pathological type, occurring in 181patients (47.8%), tubulovillous adenoma (14.2%) and hyperplastic polyp (12.7%) followed, occurring in 54 and48 patients respectively. While 313 patients (82.6%) did not feature dysplasia, 37 patients (9.7%) exhibited lowgradedysplasia, 28 (7.7%) had high-grade dysplasia and 4 had cancer (1.1%). The rates of villous componentsand dysplasia were detected to be high among pedunculated polyps and polyps larger than 1 cm (p<0.001).<br/><b>Conclusions</b>: Due to the fact that large-diameter polyps with malignant potential are commonly located in theleft colon and have a high prevalence among the middle-aged individuals, it would be appropriate to screen thispopulation at regular intervals via rectosigmoidoscopy.