Terminal ileal intubation is not necessary in routine colonoscopy: data from a large-scale retrospective study

Terminal ileal intubation (TII) demonstrates a complete colonoscopy, but whether it should be performed in routine colonoscopies remains uncertain. We aimed to explore the diagnostic yield of TII in routine colonoscopy and investigate the association of TII and the detection of lesion.

We conducted a retrospective study included patients who underwent colonoscopy with cecal intubation at our endoscopic center between November 1 2022 and July 31 2023. Macroscopic and histologic findings of terminal ileum were recorded. We used propensity score matching to adjust for differences between groups and further analyzed the difference of polyp detection rate (PDR), adenoma detection rate (ADR), sessile serrated lesion detection rate (SSDR) and lesion detection rate of right-sided colon, cecum and ascending colon between patients underwent TII or not.

There were 13,372 patients with cecal intubation colonoscopy, including 7599 (56.8%) with TII and 5773 (43.2%) without TII. Abnormal endoscopic findings were observed in 150 of 7599 unselected individuals and only 7 of these cases were regarded as pathologically significant. Likewise, abnormal endoscopic findings were found in 62 of 3502 asymptomatic individuals with 54 nonspecific ileitis determined by histopathology. After PSM, there were no significant differences in PDR (52.0% vs. 52.3%, P = 0.761), ADR (30.9% vs. 32.2%, P = 0.208), SSDR (1.6% vs. 1.5%, P = 0.541), right-sided lesion detection rate (16.9% vs. 16.8%, P = 0.908), lesion detection rate of cecum (4.9% vs. 4.7%, P = 0.613) and ascending colon (13.5% vs. 13.2%, P = 0.656) between the two groups.

TII was not necessary in routine colonoscopy, owing to the limited diagnostic value and lack of superiority on lesion detection.