Endometriosis of colon as a cause mimicking Crohn’s disease: a potential pitfall in diagnosis

Jacek Śmigielski, Beata Woźniak, Marian Brocki
In: Menopausal Review · 2013 · vol. 2 , pp. 163–165 · doi:10.5114/pm.2013.35079 · W2326892802
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This paper describes a case where colonic endometriosis mimicked Crohn's disease, leading to a misdiagnosis that was later corrected after several years of treatment.

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⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-09 ⓘ

This paper reports a long diagnostic course in a 50-year-old woman whose colonic polypoid changes, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and transient bleeding were initially diagnosed as Crohn’s disease based on ultrasound/CT (no findings) and colonoscopy with histopathology described as consistent with Crohn’s, leading to approximately 3 years of mesalazine, corticosteroids, and iron. Multiple subsequent histopathology samples remained ambiguous or non-diagnostic for several years, and the patient continued inflammatory bowel disease treatment while symptoms persisted. In the third year, a later biopsy identified endometriotic foci mainly in the colonic submucosa with estrogen receptor positivity and other immunohistochemical markers (CD10+, CK7+, CK20–), after which she underwent laparoscopic colon resection without postoperative complications. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — specifically colonic endometriosis that mimicked Crohn’s disease and highlights diagnostic pitfalls.

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Abstract

Endometriosis is a common condition in many women of the child-bearing age. It affects approximately 8-15% of the menstruating female population. Usually endometriosis can be found in the peritoneal cavity. Ectopic foci can be located in a number of other organs, such as the lung, gall bladder, retroperitoneal space, stomach, small and large intestine and pancreas. It is found beyond the peritoneal cavity in 0.2% of the population. Endometriotic foci in the colon have already been discussed, however, there is a rare type of this condition that imitates Crohn's disease. This paper presents a long-term disease which was diagnosed and treated as Crohn's disease. In the third year of treatment, colonic endometriosis was diagnosed correctly.

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Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

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