Spontaneous Necrosis of Colonic Polyps: Two Cases of Disappearance of Polyps

Abstract

It is well known that not all adenomatous colonic polyps become malignant. A longstanding concept is that mechanical damage or loss of blood supply to a polyp could result in necrosis and auto amputation. We report seeing two cases of spontaneous necrosis of colon polyps in two men of age 64 and 88 years. These cases were observed during a nine year period out of 30,000 colonoscopies performed at our hospital. This is the first report of endoscopic visualization of spontaneous necrosis of polyps. It is a rare phenomenon, and has not been reported by the medical community. Polyps usually grow slowly over many years and the chance of endoscopically encountering a polyp in the process of necrosis, which is likely to occur over a few days, before auto amputation occurs, has a very low probability.