Talk:Colonoscopy

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This article contains material from the public domain NIH Publication No. 02-4331, dated February 2002, URL http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/colonoscopy/

[edit] Removed for now

A 4 liter polyethylene glycol solution (Colyte, Golytely) remains the gold standard colonic prep with the best clearance of particulate stool. Due to the large volume and unpalatble taste, alternative regimens may be considered in the appropriate patient population.

I'm not a doctor (just somebody who's had to do this on several occasions and thus has read a good deal of info on the procedure) what I've read some studies suggest that some of the other methods work just as well or better than polyethylene glycol, and are more tolerable by patients. If you've got something to back the removed statement up, please add a reference to it, and put the statement back in. --Robert Merkel 01:46, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there exists a colyte solution that is fruit flavoured; it is actually adequately tasty and palatable, having the flavour of an over-sweet Kool-aid combined with a slick texture. With a little vodka, it'd be a pretty neat drink! Seriously, though: Most patietns find that drinking 4 litres by way of 250 ml glasses every ten minutes is quite difficult. Usually, the patient finds the fourth to seventh drinks to be the hardest to get down and keep down, but by then the mental powers are fully focused on finding the water closet, finding it in a hurry! Victims (I mean patients) should remember the following points: 1) it's hard to drink four litres (goodness, that's the size of an anti-freeze cannister!) in any day, letalone in 3-4 hours, but you will be able to do it; 2) don't make any plans to do anything outside the home for the rest of the day; 3) you will sit and read your favourite book about 10 - 20 times interspersed with drinking more of that antifreeze; 4) don't bother being obsessed about cleaning the tailpipe - it will hurt like heck the more you wipe; 5) it seems to never end - the drinking stops but all that fluid is in the fast lane to your city's sewage treatment facility - the product works as advertised, fully expelling everything that's in your bowels; 6) the thought of never drinking more water in your life is powerful, but make sure to have a drink of water around midnight - it's the last fluid allowed before the procedure; 7) this lavage prepartion is far worse than getting goosed by the doctor with scope.DocEss 18:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gettin scoped

The anxiety and insecurity created by patients prior to procedures like this are nearly always powerful and seemingly uncontrollable --- and nearly always unwarranted. Note that, compared to the lavage preparation, the procedure itself is hardly bothersome at all; indeed, some patients find that watching there own insides is fascinating [there is a tv monitor for you to watch]. They also find the doctor's adeptness with the scope and all the little tools on the end of it to be fascinating and admirable - what skill! The sedative seems to provide the required amount of placation so that time passes really quickly and the experience is hardly traumatizing; before you know it, it's all over and you realize fretted for nuttin. Relax, joke around with the doctors and nurses, watch your own insides get probed and poked, sleep for an hour when it's done and go eat when you get home.DocEss 19:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)