The small bowel follow-through: time to sit up.

It is common practice for patients to lie on their right side during small bowel barium follow-through examinations. The rationale is that this speeds up transit time and improves diagnostic usefulness. The results of a randomized, prospective study of 105 patients are presented. There was no significant difference in either transit time or diagnostic usefulness when the examination was carried out with the patient erect (sitting or ambulant) or when adopting the decubitus position. Abandoning the use of the right side down decubitus position allows a longstanding fiction to be discarded. Furthermore, lack of reclining space has been one factor which may limit the number of patients booked for this examination during a single session. Space for couches and trolleys need no longer be a barrier to the efficient organization of a small bowel screening session.