Case Study on Abdominal Disease

This case study discusses the symptoms, aetiology, and diagnosis of chronic abdominal diseases like ulcerative colitis and colon cancer. The patient, Mr. Jackson, has lower abdominal pain, bloody stools, and diarrhea, which are key symptoms of ulcerative colitis. The study also explores the factors that influence the formation of colon cancer and the methods to detect it. The article is relevant to medical students and researchers studying gastroenterology and related fields.

Running head: CASE STUDY ON ABDOMINAL DISEASE
CASE STUDY ON ABDOMINAL DISEASE
NAME OF THE STUDENT
NAME OF THE UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR NOTE

1CASE STUDY ON ABDOMINAL DISEASE
Response to question 1.
According to medical terminology, aetiology refers to the science that interacts
with the reasons of disease, the factors that affect the disease. The different disease
has different aetiology. After going through the medical history of Mr Jackson, it is found
that he mainly had the pain in the left lower quadrant (LLQ) of the abdomen and had
severe diarrhea from last 1 week. He is slightly obese and has osteoarthritis in the right
knee. He had a surgery, named Appendectomy that is the removal of appendicitis from
the abdomen, in his childhood. In 2005, he had another operation in his knee named
knee arthroscopy. Although he has a medical history of depression, according to his
current report, he had no depression right now. But according to the GIT system review
of Mr.Jackson, it is found that he has loose stool very often and sometimes blood in the
stool and over the year he used ‘gastro stop’ to treat watery diarrhea (Volz, Farmer &
Siegmund,2016).
As per Mr. Jackson‘s case history it can be concluded that he is suffering from a
chronic abdominal disease. There are various chronic abdominal diseases with almost
the same symptoms. Among them, Appendicitis and Inflammatory Bowel Disease have
almost the same symptoms as Mr.Jackson.However; Mr. Jackson had an operation in
childhood named appendectomy. Therefore, the chances of having Appendicitis can be
ruled out easily. The other one that is Inflammatory Bowel Disease can be of two types.
One of them is Crohn's Disease, and another is Ulcerative colitis (UC).The symptoms of
ulcerative colitis are (Johansson et al., 2013)-
a) Lower abdominal pain in the left quadrant
b) Stools are often containing with blood.
c) Diarrhea
d) Pain in the rectal region
e) Joint pain that means arthritics and joint swelling
f) Nausea
g) malaise
Mr. Jackson has the problem of lower abdominal pain in the left quadrant that indicates
towards ulcerative colitis, and he had the bloody stools very often, which is another

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symptom of Ulcerative colitis. In his medical case study, it is observed that Mr. Jackson
had the issue with diarrhea that is a key symptom of that disease. Although he had a
knee arthroscopy, he had arthritis or joint pain in his knee that also support the fact that
he may have ulcerative colitis. In recent time, Mr. Jackson also had nausea and
malaise, which are symptoms of the Ulcerative colitis. According to various studies,
development of the disease causes loosening of stools day by day and stools become
watery and bloody stools become very frequent in nature (Vivinus-Nebot et al., 2013).
As UC is an abdominal disease, it mainly affects the colon and intestinal tract as
well. It is mainly associated with the imbalance of microbial flora that is responsible or
the intestinal balance. In normal condition this microbial flora (Zhang & Li, 2014)
maintains the homeostasis. In case of UC, this balance is disturbed due to the breakage
of the barrier of tolerance of self-antigen in the mucous layer of the organ. The gut-
associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) maintains the local immunity in the intestinal
mucosa. In this disease, the inflammatory response becomes self-destructive and as a
result the immune system of the body does not recognize the healthy cells of the body
and the immune system of our body attacks the healthy cells. This causes chronic
inflammatory disease in the organ. This result in abnormalities related to the immune
response related to acute infection (Gremial et al., 2014). Patients with UC have an
alteration in the cells of mucous epithelial region and the patients’ shows symptoms of
UC, although there are no such aggressive bacteria. Another study show that activated
complement factor is also responsible for the UC patients and those anticodon
antibodies are associated with the luminal surface layer of the epithelial cells.
Introduction of the microbial peptide can cause the disruption of the epithelial layer and
results in UC (Hisamatsu et al., 2013).
Response to question 2.
The disease that supports the disease of Mr. Jackson is Colon Cancer. Colon
cancer is the disease when there is the occurrence of replacement of normal colon cell
(Prorok-Hamon et al., 2013).The mistake in cell division is the main reason for this
replacement. Whenever the cells start to divide abnormally, this will lead to the
formation of Colon Polyps within the colon. When this polyp stars to invade the other

3CASE STUDY ON ABDOMINAL DISEASE
layer of the system like mucosa or sub mucosa cell layers, the Polyp is converted into a
cancerous substance in nature. However, this transformation process is slow and
almost takes 8-10 years (Dennis et al., 2013).After the formation of cancer after the
formation the cancers proceeds in two ways. Firstly, it grows locally and then it expands
to the wall of the intestine and causes the formation of a primary tumour.The local
expansion can cause pain I the lower abdomen. Secondly, it can spread through blood
and lymph can cause cancer in other portion of the body. Mostly the lymph node is
affected. Primarily chronic UC can also be transformed into Colon cancer as well. Few
factors may influence the formation of colon cancer. They are mainly-
a) Age is a critical factor for colon cancer. In studies, it is seen that after the
period 50, the probability of diagnosed with colon cancer is very high.
b) A high-fat diet is also responsible for the Colon cancer. It is seen that fat
digestion in the small intestine and colon produces carcinogenic compounds in the
body.
The symptoms of colon cancer that supports the symptoms of Mr. Jackson are as
follows-
A) presence of blood in the stool
B) Diarrhea
C) Often loosening of stool
D) Abdominal pain in the left side of the abdomen
E) Nausea
F) Obesity
According to Mr. Jackson’s medical case history, he has all the symptoms described
above. Along with this, it is seen that he is 55 years old and slightly obese in nature.
This fact also indicates towards the fact that Mr. Jackson may have the chronic disease
colon cancer.
There are various methods to detect or diagnose the colon cancer. Among them,
the most effective way to detect Colon cancer is a colonoscopy. Colonoscopy is the
process by which specialist doctors insert a lengthy and flexible tube to see the inner

4CASE STUDY ON ABDOMINAL DISEASE
part of the rectum and to view the colon. If the colon polyp is detected then, they are
removed by the colonoscopy and they are sent to the pathology laboratory.The
colonoscope is the best available procedure to identify colon cancer (Ananthakrishnan
ET AL., 2015). Barium enema x-ray is less accurate in detecting the presence of small
polyps than colonoscopy. Removal of polyps would reduce the chances of colon cancer
formation in future. Another test that is performed to detect colon cancer is
sigmoidoscopy.It is a process that is performed by using a smaller flexible scope to
investigate the left side of the colon and the rectum. However, this method is more easy
to perform than the colonoscopy. Sigmoidoscopy also has the limitations including the
fact that it is unable to examine both the left and right colons (Brenner, Stock &
Hoffmeister,2014).Biopsy another method to detect the colon cancer and as well as
various other types of cancer also. In this method, a small tissue sample is taken and it
is examined under the microscope to tag the sample as cancerous (Labianca et al.,
2013). CT scan can also be used to detect the stages of colon cancer. Positron
Emission Tomography (PET), the newest method that can detect high metabolic rate in
cells, can also be used to detect the increased metabolic rates of cancer cells. PET is
also used to examine whether there is any growth of the malignant cell in the lymph
nodes or in any other organs .the in some cases a special type of blood test named
Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is done to detect cancer. CEA is a product that is
produced by the colon cancer.However all the patients with high CEA level may not
have cancer as well (Hiroshima et al., 2014).

5CASE STUDY ON ABDOMINAL DISEASE
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