Pseudomembranous colitis
Clostridioides difficile was positive in this patient in keeping with a diagnosis of pseudomembranous colitis.
This is a common cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea, and increasingly encountered in sick hospitalized patients. If undiagnosed and untreated, it continues to have high mortality. It may be classified as a form of infectious colitis.
Other causes of toxic megacolon and colitis include:
- neutropenic colitis
- inflammatory bowel disease
- ulcerative colitis
- Crohn disease
- ischemic colitis
- radiation-induced colitis
- colonic lymphoma: also causes "thumbprinting"
If there is a history of bone marrow transplantation and the bowel involvement is not limited to the colon, then consider:
- gastrointestinal graft-versus-host disease
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