Chronic Ulcerative Colitis
These photos are from a total colectomy done for clinically severe, intractable chronic ulcerative colitis (CUC). The photo above shows a veritable shag carpet of inflammatory pseudopolyps. Yes, this does look an awful lot like a case of familial adenomatous polyposis, but microscopically there was no adenomatous or otherwise dysplastic change anywhere in the whole colon.
The photo below may look like bacon frying in a cast iron skillet, but it's actually a closeup of three longitudinal sections through the colon wall. For each section, the serosa/adventitial connective tissue is shown as bright yellow lumps on the bottom. Right above is the ribbon-like muscularis propria, unbesmirched and indifferent to the devastation that has made an inflammatory ruin of the mucosa and submucosa above it.
The photo below shows a slightly closer view of a longitudinal section through the colon wall. This demonstrates not only the angry red mucosa but also the tendency for the inflamed tissue to throw itself up into inflammatory pseudopolyps.
These photos were taken with a Minolta X-370 and a Rokkor 100mm bellows lens, on Kodak Elite daylight film, ISO 100, with a blue filter to compensate for tungsten illumination. The tissue was formalin-fixed, but the nice red coloration of the inflamed tissue was recovered by soaking the specimen overnight in 70% alcohol before shooting.
Photograph by Ed Uthman, MD. Public domain. Posted 13 May 00
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