In addition to the fact that some patients with negative SBCE findings might have functional symptoms or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), the researchers acknowledged that there might have been a low diagnostic yield for SBCE because they excluded suspicious and potentially relevant findings. The second most common finding was tumor/mass lesions in 9% of patients. Among the 290 patients with such findings, inflammatory lesions - such as erosion, Crohn’s disease, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug- or radiation-induced enteritis - were the most common finding, as they accounted for 78.3% of definitive diagnoses. In the 15 publications that had clear categorizations of significant SBCE findings, less than a quarter of patients (23.7%) had definitive pathologic findings, according to the authors. Using data on 1,530 patients from 21 studies - including 5 from the United States - the investigators found that the overall diagnostic yield of SBCE was just 20.9%. “National Institute of Clinical Excellence guidelines did not recommend SBCE as a routine examination for patients with abdominal pain, but several studies focusing on the application of SBCE revealed the existence of small-bowel tumors and indicated that judicious use of SBCE might result in the negligence of significant pathologic findings,” they wrote. In the paper, Meng Xue, PhD, and colleagues pointed out that the diagnostic value of SBCE in the roughly 25% of outpatients who complain of lower abdominal pain or stomach pain is controversial. Researchers from the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, performed a retrospective review of publications to establish the probability of SBCE determining a diagnosis for patients with unexplained chronic abdominal pain. Although small-bowel capsule endoscopy (SBCE) is often used to evaluate unexplained abdominal pain, a new analysis published in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy has found the procedure’s diagnostic yield is limited.
0 kommentar(er)
