Chronic watery diarrhoea is a very common problem in the population and most of these patients will be referred for colonoscopy. If no macroscopic findings are observed during colonoscopy to justify the diarrhoea, serial colonic biopsies will be taken to rule out Microscopic Colitis (MC). However, it has been estimated that only 10-15% of these patients will be diagnosed with MC after colonoscopy. Therefore, about 80% of the biopsies collected and analysed will not be useful to establish a diagnosis, considerably increasing costs. To predict the risk of developing MC, a new promising clinical scoring system has been recently developed. This score will be useful in the diagnostic work-up of chronic watery diarrhoea to prioritize colonoscopy with stepwise colonic biopsies in patients with a positive highly specific score for MC. In cases with a negative score, colonoscopy plus biopsies should be performed only if other diagnostic tests are negative. The aim of this current study is to externally validate the new scoring system to predict MC in patients with chronic watery diarrhoea.
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Percentage of patients diagnosed with Microscopic Colitis (MC)
Timeframe: up to 2 months (after clinical and histological assessment)