Simplified assessment of segmental gastrointestinal transit time with orally small amount of barium

To determine the effectiveness and advantage of small amount of barium in the measurement of gastrointestinal transmission function in comparison with radio-opaque pallets.

Protocal 1: 8 healthy volunteers (male 6, female 2) with average age 40±6.1 were subjected to the examination of radio-opaque pellets and small amount of barium with the interval of 1 week. Protocol 2: 30 healthy volunteers in group 1 (male 8, female 22) with average age 42.5±8.1 and 50 patients with chronic functional constipation in group 2 (male 11, female 39) with average age 45.7±7.8 were subjected to the small amount of barium examination. The small amount of barium was made by 30 g barium dissolved in 200 ml breakfast. After taking breakfast which contains barium, objectives were followed with abdominal X-ray at 4, 8, 12, 24, 48, 72, 96 h until the barium was evacuated totally.

Small amount of barium presented actual chyme or stool transit. The transit time of radio-opaque pallets through the whole gastrointestinal tract was significantly shorter than that of barium (37±8 h vs. 47±10 h, P<0.05) in healthy people. The transit times of barium in constipation patients were markedly prolonged in colon (61.1±22 vs. 37.3±11, P<0.01) and rectum (10.8±3.7 vs. 2.3±0.8 h, P<0.01) compared with unconstipated volunteers. Transit times in individual gastrointestinal segments were also recorded by using small amount of barium, which allowed identifying the subtypes of constipation.

The small amount barium examination is a convenient and low cost method to provide the most useful and reliable information on the transmission function of different gastrointestinal segments and able to classify the subtypes of slow transit constipation.