Caecum

Looks like

A wide blind pouch at the start of the large bowel, low on the right, with the appendix hanging from it.

What it does

Receives liquid contents from the small intestine and begins taking back water.

Keeping it well

Cancers here often bleed silently and show only as iron-deficiency anaemia, which always needs a cause found.

Related conditions

• Acute mesenteric ischaemia (gut stroke)
• Appendicitis
• Bowel obstruction
• Chagas disease
• Chronic constipation
• Clostridioides difficile colitis
• Colon polyps
• Colorectal cancer
• Crohn's disease
• Diverticular disease
• Food poisoning
• Gastroenteritis
• Gastrointestinal bleeding
• Hereditary cancer syndromes (BRCA, Lynch)
• Infant colic
• Intussusception & pyloric stenosis
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Liver abscess (pyogenic and amoebic)
• Microscopic colitis
• Necrotising enterocolitis
• Typhoid & cholera
• Ulcerative colitis
• Volvulus (twisted bowel)