Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Does constipation predict the quality of bowel preparation during colonoscopy?
  1. Peter Bloom1,
  2. Alexandra Shustina1,
  3. John N Gaetano2,
  4. Nicholas Gualtieri1,
  5. Dana Tievsky3,
  6. James G Robilotti1
  1. 1Department of Medicine, Section of Gastroenterology, St Vincents's Catholic Medical Center, New York, USA
  2. 2New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, USA
  3. 3Department of Epidemiology, New York University School of Dentistry, New York, USA
  1. Correspondence to Peter Bloom, St Vincents's Catholic Medical Center, New York, USA; pbloomjr1{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Background Suboptimal bowel preparation has several consequences, including reduced polyp detection rate and increased cost of colorectal cancer screening. The presence of constipation is thought to be a feature associated with poor bowel preparation.

Objectives To characterise the relationship between features of constipation and the quality of bowel preparation during colonoscopy.

Design Patients presenting for an outpatient colonoscopy were asked to complete a questionnaire which included demographics, type of bowel purgative and features of bowel movements (BMs)—derived from the ROME III criteria for diagnosis of chronic constipation.

Patients 101 patients from the community undergoing surveillance colonoscopy completed the study.

Interventions Patients underwent standard bowel preparation, completed a pre-endoscopy survey, followed by routine surveillance colonoscopy.

Main outcome measurements The endoscopist rated the quality of bowel preparation using the previously validated Ottawa scoring scale. Statistical analysis was performed to characterise the relationship between the existence of chronic constipation and quality of bowel preparation.

Results BM frequency of <1/day, 1/day, 2/day, or 3/day was inversely correlated with average total Ottawa score (range 5.93 to 4.00), p=0.028) as well as recto-sigmoid Ottawa score (range 1.8 to 1.0, p=0.006). Among women, there was a statistically significant (p=0.025) association between those who reported hard stools (Ottawa=6.3) and those who denied hard stools (4.5).

Conclusion Eliciting features of BMs before colonoscopy may predict those at risk for poor bowel preparations and increase cost effectiveness of colonoscopy.

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Footnotes

  • Competing interests None.

  • Ethics approval This study was conducted with the approval of the institutional review board of St Vincent's Catholic Medical Center.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.