Giant Filiform Polyposis not Associated with Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Case Report

BACKGROUND: Filiform polyposis (FP) is an uncommon cause of non-neoplastic and non-syndromic polyposis. Several hypotheses concerning its pathogenesis have been published. FP is most frequently associated with a post-inflammatory reparative process; indeed, the most frequent association is with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). FP is characterized by one to hundreds of uniform, slender, arborizing, vermiform projections of the large bowel mucosa and submucosa lined by normal or inflamed colonic mucosa. The most common sites for these polyps are the transverse and descending colon. CASE REPORT: In this report we present a case of giant FP associated with locally invasive adenocarcinoma of the right colon in a 73-year-old man with no past medical history of IBD. CONCLUSION: Few of these cases have been reported in the literature, and out of the approximately 20 of such case reports only one other was associated with colorectal adenocarcinoma.