CLINICAL EVALUATION OF THE PUSH ENTEROSCOPE IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF DIFFERENT CAUSES OF CHRONIC DIARRHEA

Abstract

Enteroscopy is a small bowel endoscopy. Previously, the small bowel was explored using a disinfected pediatric colonoscope. The sonde cntcroscope was the first to develop but is becoming more and more limited in its indications. While, the push enteroscope; which is a long gastroscope, is now well tolerated, accepted modality for evaluation of patients with small bowel diseases, including those with undiagnosed causes for G.I bleeding, various types of chronic diarrhea, malabsorption, and radiological abnormalities.

The aim of this work was to evaluate the role of push enteroscopy in diagnosing cases of unexplained chronic diarrhea which could not be diagnosed by other methods or not responding to treatment according to the previous diagnosis.

Our study was conducted on 40 cases of chronic diarrhea. They were subjected to full history taking, clinical examination, routine laboratory investigations, with stress on stool analysis at1d culture, 0- xylosc, HIV test by ELISA, tmagmg investigations as abdominal sonography, barium meal and follow-through. Ocsophagogastroduodenoscopy was performed with duodenal biopsy and colonoscopy with ileal biopsies.

Enteroscopy was then performed when these investigations didn't give clue to the diagnosis. Our yield of enteroscopy was 90%, as diagnosis was reached in 36 cases.