Colonic transit time after spinal cord injury

Colonic transit time (CTT) was measured with abdominal radiographs using Chaussade's technique in 30 spinal cord injured patients (ASIA A and B) following ingestion of 20 radiomarkers per day for three days. A significant increase in total CTT (p = 0.0001) and segmental CTT of the right colon (p = 0.0004) and of the left colon (p = 0.0001) was shown. While using on the average only 2.3 films of the abdomen per patient, we obtained results comparable with other radiologic techniques which use radiomarkers to measure CTT. The clinical relevance of these results is not clear and their correlation with intestinal symptoms remains to be investigated.