ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A BETTER COLONOSCOPE

Abstract

Although recent colonoscopy is improved with the advances in fiberoptics and insertion techniques, patients still suffer much discomfort during the examination. During the last four months, three types of colonoscope i.e. CF-TB, CF-P and CF-T (their diameters of the insertion tube are 13.7mm, 8.8mm and 16.0mm respectively) were used clinically to determine how thick a colonoscope must be in favour of patients. The results obtained were as follows; 1) Successful insertion rate to the ileocecal area with CF-TB and CF-T was 100%, whereas that with CF-P was 80%. 2) Discomfort of the patients was much more lessened with CF-P than with other two. Eighty per cent of the patients with CF-P had less discomfort than by barium enema, whereas 46% with CF-TB and 31% with CF-T. Therefore, a colonoscope is desirably designed to be more slender than CF-TB and thicker than CF-P.