Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Dec 27, 2016; 8(12): 779-783
Published online Dec 27, 2016. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v8.i12.779
Complete rectal prolapse in young Egyptian males: Is schistosomiasis really condemned?
Ahmed A Abou-Zeid, Islam H ElAbbassy, Ahmed M Kamal, Dina A Somaie
Ahmed A Abou-Zeid, Islam H ElAbbassy, Ahmed M Kamal, Dina A Somaie, Unit of Colorectal Surgery, Department of General Surgery, El Demerdash Hospital, Ain Shams University, Abbasiya 11566, Cairo, Egypt
Author contributions: Abou-Zeid AA, ElAbbassy IH and Kamal AM contributed to study conception and design and data acquisition; Abou-Zeid AA, ElAbbassy IH, Kamal AM and Somaie DA contributed to data analysis and interpretation; Abou-Zeid AA, ElAbbassy IH and Somaie DA contributed to writing of article; Abou-Zeid AA and Somaie DA contributed to editing, reviewing and final approval of article.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Ain Shams Medical School Surgery Department IRB.
Clinical trial registration statement: Inapplicable.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Dataset available from the corresponding author at ahabaz@hotmail.com.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Ahmed A Abou-Zeid, MD, FRCS (Edin), Unit of Colorectal Surgery, Department of General Surgery, El Demerdash Hospital, Ain Shams University, 11 El Ensha Street, Abbasiya 11566, Cairo, Egypt. ahabaz@hotmail.com
Telephone: +20-122-7461088
Received: June 26, 2016
Peer-review started: June 28, 2016
First decision: September 2, 2016
Revised: September 11, 2016
Accepted: October 5, 2016
Article in press: October 9, 2016
Published online: December 27, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Rectal prolapse in Western countries is mainly a disease of old women but in Egypt, the incidence of complete rectal prolapse was found to be highest among young males. Previous studies have attributed this to proctosigmoiditis caused by schistosomiasis, which is endemic in many rural areas of Egypt, and to which young males are more susceptible. In this study we disprove this assumption and shed light on other factors related to socioeconomic status that are more likely to be the cause of this disease distribution in the population.