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Dr. Pankaj Vashi
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VIDEO: Dr. Vashi - Cancer Symptoms, Can They Be Misdiagnosed As IBS?

Dr. Vashi explains what irritable bowl syndrome/IBS is and if cancer symptoms can be misdiagnosed as IBS.

Dr. Vashi:
That’s a very good question. One of the unique thing about women is that they somehow have very high incidence of a condition that we all know as irritable bowel syndrome. Irritable bowel syndrome is nothing but a condition with multiple symptoms which can resemble any condition in digestive tract. They can have problem with swallowing, they can have problem with bloating, problem like heartburn, problem with constipation, problem with diarrhea, problem with constipation and diarrhea.

For some reason, 85% of the patient that we see in gastroenterology of irritable bowel syndrome are women. Now, the question comes up is, “Why such a high incidence in women?” and there are multiple theories around it. The most acceptable theory is something to do with hormones. It is possible that the female hormone estrogen, progesterone have something to do with it or it is for some reason women have more sensitive nervous system of the digestive tract and they are more susceptible to that.

Now there is also a lot of relationship established between level of stress and irritable bowel syndrome so there is also some psychological conditions that will indirectly or directly manifest as gastrointestinal symptoms. The key thing here is to identify these patients and make sure that they don’t have anything serious.

One of the issues with women is that many times they are misdiagnosed. They come to the physician with some GI symptoms or bloating and change in bowel habits and it is presumed because it’s so common that people say, "Oh you’ve got irritable bowel syndrome,” and it turns out, down the road if they go and get some more testing done, they found out that it is in fact something else going on as much as a colon cancer or colitis.

So, diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome, while it is so common, it’s always a diagnosis of exclusion. You want to make sure that you exclude most treatable conditions and that’s where there are certain what we call, red flag symptoms that we look for. If somebody has got blood in the stool, that’s definitely a no-no. You cannot get that irritable bowel syndrome.

Somebody who has got a change in bowel habit after the age of 50, that’s unlikely irritable bowel syndrome. Somebody has a very short history of just few months of symptoms, that’s unlikely irritable bowel syndrome. Somebody who is losing weight, it’s unlikely irritable bowel syndrome. So these are what we call warning signs or what we call the red flag signs that we look for.

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