Benefit of a 360-degree horizontal turn following premedication with simethicone on image quality during...

To investigate whether a 360-degree horizontal turn after oral premedication with simethicone improves the mucosal visibility during gastroendoscopic examination, and to determine the proper time to turn over the patient.

This study involved 993 patients scheduled for gastroendoscopy. Just before gastroendoscopy, after oral premedication with simethicone, patients were randomly assigned to three groups: in Group A, patients waited for 20 min before gastroendoscopy; in Group B, patients were separately waited for 5/10/15/20 min and were then turned 360 degrees just before gastroendoscopy; in Group C, patients were immediately turned 360 degrees and then separately waited for 5/10/15/20 min before examination. The sum of the gastric mucosal visibility scores (MVS) was calculated after the examination. The MVS and proportion of images with higher visibility scores for the mucosal surface. Lower scores indicate better visibility of the mucosal surface.

In Groups B and Groups C, when waiting time more than 10 min had lower mean total MVS than Group A. The MVS of four subgroups of Group B were not different from those of Group C.

Oral premedication with simethicone and immediately make a body posture change (turning over 360 degrees) then waiting for 10min can increase the image quality during gastroendoscopy and effectively decrease the premedication time.