Clinical Study on Diverticular Disease of the Colon

Recently, diverticulum and/or diverticula of the colon is a common lesion in Japanese as well as in European and American.1) During the recent four-years from 1970 to 1973, we have experienced 2420 cases of barium enema, and among them 93 cases (3.8 %) of colonic diverticula were discovered radiologically. Any part of the colon may be affected, but the colonic diverticula were commonly observed in the coecum and ascending colon in Japanese, contrariwise in sigmoid colon in European and American.2) Clinical diagnosis of diverticulosis is difficult, because its signs and symptoms are similar to those of appendicitis, colonic cancer, irritable colon and other inflammatory bowel diseases. In our cases, diverticulosis was clinically diagnosed in 14.0 %, especially diverticulitis was only in 3.3 %.3) High intraluminal pressure and/or weakness of the colonic wall may produce the colonic diverticulicula pathophysiologically. Furthermore, obesty and abnormal bowel habit (especially diarrhoe) may also heighten the intraluminal pressure, and may accelerate the production of diverticula.4) For the clinical problem of the diverticular diseases, we strongly suggest that the symptomatic diverticula, especially diverticulitis must be differentiated from the non-symp-tomatic one.