The effect of quality of segmental bowel preparation on adenoma detection rate

The effectiveness in surveillance colonoscopy largely depends on the quality of bowel preparation. We aimed to investigate the quality of bowel preparation segmentally and its effect on Adenoma Detection Rate (ADR) and Advanced Adenoma Detection Rate (AADR) at corresponding bowel segments.

This is a single-centered and cross-sectional study. A consecutive of 5798 patients who underwent colonoscopy examination were included. Bowel preparation was evaluated based on Bowel Bubble Scale (BBS) in general and Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS) in each segment (right side, transverse and left side of colon) and total BBPS scores. The quality of bowel preparation was correlated with ADR and AADR.

Four thousand nine hundred forty colonoscopies (14,820 bowel segments) were included in the final analysis. In which 30.9% scored 3, 57.5% scored 2, 11.2% scored 1 and 0.4% scored 0 on basis of BBPS. For each score, ADR were 10.8, 7.7, 4.9 and 3.2%, respectively; whereas AADR were 4.5, 2.8,1.8 and 1.6% (P < 0.05). 36.9% of the colonoscopies showed presence of minimal bubbles and 34.3% with no bubble. For bowels without bubbles and with a large amount of bubbles, ADR were 28.3 and 20.0% respectively; and AADR were 13.3 and 7.1% respectively.

Segmental bowels' cleanliness and the amount of bubbles in bowels significantly affect ADR and AADR. The better the bowel preparation at each segment is and the less bubbles in the bowel there are, the higher ADR and AADR we got. We suggest repeating colonoscopy if any segment of the bowel preparation is poor, or if there is more bubbles, even if the total score of BBPS indicates good or fair bowel preparation.