Clinical, endoscopic, pathological characteristics and management of cap polyposis: experience from a Tertiary...

Cap polyposis (CP) is a rare kind of benign disease, and the majority of previously published relevant articles involve a small number of patients. Hence, we summarized our experience to contribute additional data, hoping to raise awareness of this disease.

From 1 January 2017 to 1 November 2021, consecutive patients diagnosed with CP were retrospectively reviewed. Their medical histories, and laboratory, imaging, endoscopic, and pathology results were analyzed. We made telephone calls to the patients and searched for the information in our electronic medical records to obtain the follow-up results.

Forty-one patients were chosen for analysis. The median age of the patients was 20 years old, and 90.24% (37 patients) of the patients were male. The majority of the patients presented with hematochezia. The rectum was the most commonly affected site, and the Helicobacter pylori infection rate was high. There were multiple and combined treatments for these patients. These treatments can be divided into 3 main categories: medical therapy, endotherapy and surgery. Medical therapy helped to diminish the size of but the polyps were difficult to resolve; however, the patients' symptoms could be diminished. Twenty-three patients underwent surgical resection, and 12 patients received endotherapy. We further compared the two methods of polyp resection. Both endotherapy and surgery were safe, and the recurrence risk was not significantly different between the two kinds of therapy (p = 0.321).

The clinical improvement of medical treatments was not satisfactory, and endotherapy or surgical resection could remove the polyposis and provide temporary relief, but the recurrence rates were high.