LONDON-Color blindness can shield colorectal disease’s red flag.
Surgeons in East Glamorgan, Wales, say that three men had therapy delayed because they could not distinguish red from brown and didn’t recognize their rectal bleeding. Eventually their wives saw red on toilet seats.
One 43-year-old thought the blood he’d passed painlessly for three months was loose stool, says Dr. Michael Foster’s group. But a barium enema revealed a Duke’s C1 adenocarcinoma in the midsigmoid colon.
A 48-year-old also presumed diarrhea for two weeks. Proctoscopy and sigmoidoscopy were negative, the National Health Service surgeons reported in the British Medical Journal. But a barium enema showed sigmoid colon diverticular disease. A 36-year-old had second-degree hemorrhoids that were banded.
