RESULTS
The patients included in the study were between the ages of 19 and 92, and the mean age was 49.07±15.80. Furthermore, 89 (41.6%) of the patients were female and 125 (58.4%) were male. The number of IM positive and IM negative patients were 68 (31.8%) and 146 (68.2%) respectively. A total of 99 (46.3%) patients were positive for H. pylori, and 115 (53.7%) were negative. Patients were separated into two groups according to their H. pylori infection status (Table 1). There was no significant difference between the H. pylori positive and H. pylori negative groups in terms of mean age and gender. No correlation was found between H. pylori infection and colorectal neoplasm prevalence (p=0.310). Patients in the IM positive group were significantly older than the patients in the IM negative group (p=0.000), and there were a higher number of male patients in the IM positive group. Colorectal neoplasm prevalence was significantly higher in the IM positive group in comparison with the IM negative group (p=0.033). The distribution of patients according to IM status was presented in Table 2. All of the patients were separated into four groups (Table 3): Group A: IM positive, H. pylori negative; Group B: IM positive, H. pylori negative; Group C: IM negative, H. pylori positive; and Group D: IM negative, H. pylori negative. There was not any significant difference between these four groups in terms of colon neoplasm prevalence.