Warm water eases colonoscopy
Drinking warm water seems to relax the bowel and improve the comfort of colonoscopy, as well as the completeness of the procedure.
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Drinking warm water seems to relax the bowel and improve the comfort of colonoscopy, as well as the completeness of the procedure.
Colonoscopy involves inserting a thin, flexible scope into the colon to look for any pathology or disease. With colonoscopy, the entire length of the colon can be inspected. It is considered the most sensitive way to screen for colon cancer. However, incomplete colonoscopy examinations - when the full length of the colon cannot be examined, for whatever reason - do occur and may lead to some small growths in the colon being missed.
To see if having warm water before the examination helps reducing the pain and discomfort, researchers made sixty-four participants drink warm, cold, or no water along with the standard sodium phosphate colonoscopy preparation solution. The participants were about 33 years old and of normal weight Ten to 11 patients in each group had previous abdominal or gynecological surgery. Twenty-one in the warm water group, and 17 each in the cold and no water groups, had irritable bowel syndrome, a chronic condition that causes intermittent bowel irregularities, pain, and bloating. Generally, patients are sedated during colonoscopy to minimize pain and discomfort, and allow more complete colon examinations, but the volunteers for this study agreed to undergo their colonoscopy without sedation.
The researchers were able to completely examine more of the large intestine surface (98.4 percent on average) of patients who drank 2 litres of warm water just prior to undergoing colonoscopy. By contrast, colonoscopy reached lesser surface amounts (90.6 and 92.2 percent, respectively) in patients who drank 2 liters of cold water or no water. Moreover, the warm water group as a whole, and particularly those 40 years and younger or with irritable bowel syndrome, reported lesser pain both during colonoscopy and 2 hours later. This group also required less time for insertion and withdrawal of the examination probe even though their degree of intestinal spasms was similar to those drinking cold or no water.
The findings suggest that intake of warm water before colonoscopy reduces procedure-related pain and technical difficulty. Further studies are required to determine how drinking warm water affects the bowel.
Colonoscopy involves inserting a thin, flexible scope into the colon to look for any pathology or disease. With colonoscopy, the entire length of the colon can be inspected. It is considered the most sensitive way to screen for colon cancer. However, incomplete colonoscopy examinations - when the full length of the colon cannot be examined, for whatever reason - do occur and may lead to some small growths in the colon being missed.
To see if having warm water before the examination helps reducing the pain and discomfort, researchers made sixty-four participants drink warm, cold, or no water along with the standard sodium phosphate colonoscopy preparation solution. The participants were about 33 years old and of normal weight Ten to 11 patients in each group had previous abdominal or gynecological surgery. Twenty-one in the warm water group, and 17 each in the cold and no water groups, had irritable bowel syndrome, a chronic condition that causes intermittent bowel irregularities, pain, and bloating. Generally, patients are sedated during colonoscopy to minimize pain and discomfort, and allow more complete colon examinations, but the volunteers for this study agreed to undergo their colonoscopy without sedation.
The researchers were able to completely examine more of the large intestine surface (98.4 percent on average) of patients who drank 2 litres of warm water just prior to undergoing colonoscopy. By contrast, colonoscopy reached lesser surface amounts (90.6 and 92.2 percent, respectively) in patients who drank 2 liters of cold water or no water. Moreover, the warm water group as a whole, and particularly those 40 years and younger or with irritable bowel syndrome, reported lesser pain both during colonoscopy and 2 hours later. This group also required less time for insertion and withdrawal of the examination probe even though their degree of intestinal spasms was similar to those drinking cold or no water.
The findings suggest that intake of warm water before colonoscopy reduces procedure-related pain and technical difficulty. Further studies are required to determine how drinking warm water affects the bowel.
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