Small Bowel Cleansing for Capsule Endoscopy in Pediatric Patients

Capsule endoscopy (CE) is a well-known, non-invasive, diagnostic tool to evaluate small bowel diseases in adults and children. Unfortunately, because CE does not have functions which allow suctioning of fluid or washing the small bowel mucosa during the examination, its diagnostic yield can be limited by presence of debris, biliary secretion, bubbles and blood in the gut lumen that may hide relevant findings especially in the distal small bowel. In addition, CE sometimes fails to reach the cecum within the battery life of the capsule, resulting in a failure to visualize the distal small intestine. However, in children this problem is less frequent for the increased intestinal motility, which reduces the transit time of the capsule. It was believed that cleaning the small intestine prior to examination would improve mucosal visibility during the endoscopy and, as a result, the diagnostic yield of the technique. Therefore, proposals were put forward based on preparations for other types of explorations, such as colonoscopies (2). Some authors have already studied in adults the effect of bowel preparation on small-bowel visualization using different agents; the results of the published series are contradictory. To date, while there is evidence for a benefit from bowel preparation for CE, there is so far no consensus on an optimal preparation regimen. In addition, in children there are not studies on this topic. Therefore, overnight fasting before the examination still remains the proposed preparation for capsule endoscopy.