Comparison of two Meglumine-Diatrizoate based bowel preparations for computed tomography colonography: Comparison of patient symptoms and bowel preparation quality.

INTRODUCTION

To investigate the impact of two Meglumine-Diatrizoate based bowel preparation regimes for computed tomography colonography (CTC) on the patient experience and image quality.

METHODS

100 patients consumed Meglumine-Diatrizoate at 24 h and 12 h prior to the CTC examination. 50 patients followed regime 1 (50:50), 50 ml of Meglumine-Diatrizoate at both 24 and 12 h prior to the examination. 50 patients followed regime 2 (75:25), 75 ml of Meglumine-Diatrizoate at 24 h prior to the examination and 25 ml of Meglumine-Diatrizoate at 12 h prior to the examination. All patients completed a questionnaire to indicate the time of onset of adverse effects and when they were most severe. Five advanced practitioners assessed the image quality in a visual grading study. Visual grading characteristic (VGC) analysis was applied with regime 1 as the reference condition and regime 2 and test condition; test alpha was set at 0.05.

RESULTS

Image quality was assessed with successful bowel cleansing as the scoring criteria for the visual grading study. The bowel cleansing as provided by the two Meglumine-Diatrizoate regimes was revealed not to be statistically different, with the area under the VGC curve and 95% confidence intervals 0.487 (0.287, 0.701), p = 0.887. Patients taking the 75:25 bowel preparation experienced a shorter median time to the onset of adverse effects.

CONCLUSION

There was no observed difference in Image quality criteria score for the two Meglumine-Diatrizoate based bowel preparation with more predictable adverse effects of Meglumine-Diatrizoate with the 75:25 preparation.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

Providing patients with a higher contrast burden 24 h prior to CTC may have a positive impact on the patient experience without compromising image quality.