What is the main target: a clearer colon with a sennoside-based regime, or adequate bowel cleansing before...

Even though polyethylene glycol-electrolyte lavage (PEG-EL)-based regimes have become the gold standard in recent years, to finish drinking 4 L of PEG-EL solution can be difficult. The quality of sennoside-based bowel-cleansing regimes used in Turkey has been known for some time. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the efficacy of both bowel-cleansing regimes.

Patients over 18 years old undergoing elective colonoscopic procedures between January and March 2011 were included in the study. The patients were divided into 2 groups; in Group 1, 91 patients were given sennoside a + b calcium 500 mg/250 mL (X-M solution, Yenişehir Laboratuarı, Ankara, Turkey), and in Group 2, 94 patients were given 4 L of PEG-EL (Golytely, Boston, MA, USA).

The mean age of the patients and the male distribution were similar in the 2 groups. Both inadequate bowel cleansing and the best cleansed bowels were seen in Group 1. The number of inadequate colonoscopies declined when using a whole bowel-cleansing regime from 24.5% to 19.3% in Group 2, but it did not decline in Group 1.

The best bowel cleansing can be achieved with sennoside-based regimes, whereas a greater proportion of adequate results via colonoscopy were reached with the PEG-EL-based regimes.