Inlfammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) represents a number of conditions principally Ulcerative Colitis (U.C.) and Crohn's Disease (C.D.)

The symptoms commonly include diarrhoea and rectal bleeding but also include a variable amount of absominal pain, mucus in the stool etc.

 There are also a number of 'extra-intestinal' manifestations of disease i.e. association conditions which affect other organs apart from the bowel.

Medical Treatment of IBD

There are a number of treatment options...details will be posted soon.

Strictly speaking constipation is a symptom rather than a disease itself.

 It is however so common and in most cases is just utterly miserable but in some cases it can lead to severe consequences that we have given it a section of this website.

There are a multitude of diseases, drugs and conditions that can give rise to constipation and it is important to investigate according to symptoms which mean, in most cases, a visit to see your family doctor.

Cancers are amongst the commonest causes of death in this country, accounting for about one in every four deaths - almost 130,000 per annum¹.  The majority of cancer deaths are from tumours found in four principal sites: lung, colorectal, breast and prostate (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Cancer deaths in England and Wales by sex, 1996.

These cancers are common in Western countries but there is a much lower incidence in third world countries (Figure 2).  It has been observed that immigrants moving from a low risk area to one of high risk acquire the same risk as the indigenous population within one or two generations suggesting that environmental factors are responsible².

Figure 2. Geographic variation in the incidence of colon and rectal cancer in men ².

Tobacco smoking, electromagnetic radiation, environmental chemicals, hormones, bacterial or viral infection, level of physical activity, reproductive and sexual behaviour are thought to be important in the aetiology of cancer at certain sites³.  However, it is thought that diet remains the most important factor and it has been estimated that dietary change could result in a reduction of fatal cancers of between 35 and 70%⁴.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer in the Western world.  In 1985, there was estimated to be 677,500 new cases and 394,100 deaths worldwide^5,6.  In the United Kingdom there is approximately a 4% lifetime risk, 31,000 new cases annually and 16,000 deaths⁷.

The prevalence increases with age with over 90% of cases occurring after the age of 55 (Table 1).  The  incidence of colon cancer varies little between the sexes^8,9, whereas rectal cancer is twice as common in men as in women².