Crohn's disease of the colon and its distinction from diverticulitis.

Crohn's disease may affect segments of the colon (Brooke, 1959; Lindner, Marshak, Wolf, and Janowitz, 1963; Lockhart-Mummery and Morson, 1960, 1964) where diverticula are a common finding in the middle-aged and elderly (Dearlove, 1954; Pemberton, Black, and Maino, 1947). It would thus be surprising if Crohn's disease did not sometimes occur in the region of colonic diverticula and the object of this paper is to describe 26 such patients. Some of these patients presented little diagnostic difficulty. Others, with colonic diverticula, presented as 'diverticulitis' but the inflammation of the colon was subsequently shown to be due to Crohn's disease. Patients have also been seen who were diagnosed as diverticulitis but were later found to have Crohn's disease without any diverticula being present.