Maintaining Privacy in Diagnostic Examinations of the Large Bowel - Essay Example

The only successful strategy for detecting early disease is screening. The main aim of screening is to identify a disease process in asymptomatic individuals but many who accept an invitation to be screened do have relevant symptoms, and, indeed, screening may be more readily accepted when symptoms are present. Colorectal diagnosis is the diagnosis of suspicion, meaning many apparently healthy people may have the diagnosis with a screening when the primary care or the referring physician has a high index of diagnosis. Sometimes, persuasion is necessary to convince people about the necessity of the screening examination, since patients who perceive themselves as healthy would not like to present themselves for an examination that poses many barriers for a spontaneous presentation at the screening examination. In reality, only 37% of the patients are diagnosed at the early stage of the disease. This reflects a low rate of awareness about the disease. The screening rates, whatever the method is low, are in the range of less than 40% of all people who should be screened. The available screening methods are multiple, fecal occult blood test, flexible sigmoidoscopy, double-contrast barium enema, and colonoscopy. Some are, however, more acceptable than others to the patient. If one attempts to find out the reasons, one or more of these procedures are uncomfortable or unpleasant due to the fact that depending on available facilities, they may compromise with the patients’ dignity. Some of the tests require cumbersome colonic preparations, which are considered undesirable in comparison to the procedure (Jemal et al., 2007, 43-66).
A barium enema is a procedure where after colonic preparation barium is injected into the rectum, and barium being radio-opaque delineates the colonic lumen. Any polyp, mass, or other lesions are thus diagnosed by the contrasting image of barium within the colon. Several different new technologies for detection of colorectal cancer or other lesions within the colon have been termed as less invasive, accurate, and more acceptable to the population on the basis of privacy issues or issues of dignity in comparison to conventional screening tests such as barium enema or colonoscopy (Stewart and Dodds, 1979, 197-200). The most important among them perhaps is computerized tomographic Colonography that provides the advantage of radiographic imaging. This is an imaging procedure that utilizes computer programming to combine multiple, helical CT scans in order to create two or three-dimensional images of the interior of the patient’s colon. The images can be rotated in different views and even combined for a “flown through” image for the complete view of the colon. On some occasions, this is also termed virtual colonoscopy (Fletcher et al., 2000, 704-711).
The procedure for CT Colonography has some basic principles that are followed while doing this procedure. Like many other tests of this category, a thorough cleansing is necessary prior to the test. Most of the physicians recommend a diet that is low residue for 48 hours before the test augmented with bisacodyl and a phosphor-soda. Actually, the success of the procedure depends on the completeness of this cleansing process.