Updated April 16, 2015.
Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.
In medicine, at face value, a single symptom like bloody stool can usually be attributable to several conditions. Blood in the stool typically presents as blood red or maroonish and represents a bleed somewhere in the GI tract from mouth to anus. (If blood is coming from the upper GI tract and is being digested, it can also take on a black, tar-like appearance called melena. I won't be covering melena in this slide show.)
Using details from your history, physical exam, diagnostic tests and so forth, physicians are able to deduce the etiology or cause of symptoms and rule out various differential diagnoses. In the spirit of differential diagnoses, I present you 10 possible causes of bloody stool. Please note that I've conspicuously left out infectious causes of like e.coli. (Don't worry, I'll be covering bloody diarrhea in a separate article.)
Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.
In medicine, at face value, a single symptom like bloody stool can usually be attributable to several conditions. Blood in the stool typically presents as blood red or maroonish and represents a bleed somewhere in the GI tract from mouth to anus. (If blood is coming from the upper GI tract and is being digested, it can also take on a black, tar-like appearance called melena. I won't be covering melena in this slide show.)
Using details from your history, physical exam, diagnostic tests and so forth, physicians are able to deduce the etiology or cause of symptoms and rule out various differential diagnoses. In the spirit of differential diagnoses, I present you 10 possible causes of bloody stool. Please note that I've conspicuously left out infectious causes of like e.coli. (Don't worry, I'll be covering bloody diarrhea in a separate article.)
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