1983 Volume 25 Issue 12 Pages 1954-1961
Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) is a widely popularized technique for the diagnosis of the pancreatobiliary diseases. It is a problem which should be improved that ERCP often give considerable distress to the subjects in comparison with other noninvasive diagnostic procedures such as ultrasonography and computed tomo-graphy. The purpose of this study is to clarify the degree of distress of the subjects in ERCP and to know how to minimize the distress. The inf ormations about the distress were obtained through questionnaries sent to 103 patients who underwent routine ERCP exami-nations. The results were as follows. 1: The degree of the patient's distress was increased by prolonging the examination time of ERCP. The subjects whose examination time were shorter than 15 minutes complained very little distress. 2 : The degree of distress was obviously lower in the patients examined by stretching method than those by pushing method. 3 : The majority of the cases with intravenous administration of diazepam before ERCP complained more slight distress than that by the routine upper gastrointestinal endoscopy without sedativa. 4 : A new type of thin and short duodenoscope (PJF : Olympus) could not relieve patient's distress sufficiently without administration of sedativa. In conclusion, adequate administration of sedativa, shortning of examination time, devising the technique for scope insertion and improving the structure of duodenoscope are needed to minimize the patient's distress in routine ERCP.
