Letters to the Editors

Letter: bile acid diarrhoea is not a rare cause of diarrhoea in secondary care

Table 1 | Frequency of individual diagnoses in consecutive patients with chronic diarrhoea

U. N. Shivaji*, F. U. Chowdhury† & A. C Ford*,‡ *Leeds Gastroenterology Institute, St. James’s University Hospital, Leeds, UK. † Department of Nuclear Medicine, St. James’s University Hospital, Leeds, UK. ‡ Leeds Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. E-mail: [email protected] doi:10.1111/apt.12821

SIRS, We read the article by Wilcox et al.,1 and the letter by Kurien et al. with interest.2 We agree that bile acid diarrhoea (BAD) may be the underlying aetiology in a significant proportion of patients with chronic diarrhoea. With this in mind, we would like to share our own experience of this issue. We undertook a review of consecutive unselected new patient referrals to a single gastroenterologist’s out-patient clinic during a 3-year period, from January 2010 to December 2012.3 All clinic letters were reviewed retrospectively, and symptoms reported by the patient at the initial consultation were recorded. Radiology, endoscopy, chemical pathology, and histopathology databases were then cross-examined in order to ascertain the final diagnosis following full investigation, to the level deemed appropriate by the consulting physician. We defined BAD using a 23-seleno-25-homo-tauro-cholic acid (SeHCAT) retention value of

Letter: bile acid diarrhoea is not a rare cause of diarrhoea in secondary care.

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