Published 15 June 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1877
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1877

Practice

Diagnosis in General Practice

Acute diarrhoea in adults

Roger Jones, Wolfson professor of general practice1, Greg Rubin, professor of general practice and primary care2

1 Department of General Practice and Primary Care, King’s College London School of Medicine, London SE11 6SP, 2 Wolfson Research Institute, School of Medicine and Health, University of Durham

Correspondence to: R Jones roger.jones@kcl.ac.uk

A common condition provides an example of the use of the test of time in diagnosis, explained in the accompanying article by Susanna Almond and Nick Summerton (doi: 10.1136/bmj.b1878)

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A 47 year old man consults because he has had diarrhoea for the past 10 days. Three weeks ago he travelled to Bangkok for an academic convention. He now has occasional cramping abdominal pain and feels generally off colour; he has not lost weight and has not noticed blood or mucus in his stools. He has taken loperamide for the past few days, without much benefit.

The diagnostic dilemma is to distinguish between diarrhoea due to short term, probably infective, causes and diarrhoea that represents an early symptom of a more serious gastrointestinal disorder. Acute diarrhoea is somewhat arbitrarily defined as diarrhoea for less than four weeks.1 It is said to affect almost every adult in the United Kingdom every year,2 though most people do not consult a doctor about it.3 4 Viruses are the most common infectious cause in the community, and Campylobacter (12%) and rotavirus (8%) are the organisms . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

The rhythm method
Jane Smith
BMJ 2009 339: b2668. [Extract] [Full Text]

Test of time
Susanna C Almond and Nick Summerton
BMJ 2009 338: b1878. [Extract] [Full Text]

Coeliac disease in primary care
Roger Jones
BMJ 2007 334: 704-705. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Study of infectious intestinal disease in England: rates in the community, presenting to general practice, and reported to national surveillance
Jeremy G Wheeler, Dinesh Sethi, John M Cowden, Patrick G Wall, Laura C Rodrigues, David S Tompkins, Michael J Hudson, and Paul J Roderick
BMJ 1999 318: 1046-1050. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Response to the management of diarrhea in adults
Rina Muller
bmj.com, 22 Jun 2009 [Full text]
Do not forget to request C. difficile testing in travellers
Fiona J Cooke, et al.
bmj.com, 14 Jul 2009 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ