How unpleasant is endoscopy?

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    An assessment of the short term quality of life impact of GI endoscopy.

  • IRAS ID

    135225

  • Contact name

    Timothy Card

  • Contact email

    tim.card@nottingham.ac.uk

  • Research summary

    It is difficult to know how unpleasant many of the procedures used in health care are for the person undergoing them, and even harder to compare the degrees of unpleasantness. Being able to do this is however clearly important if patients are to make good decisions about what they will agree to undergo.

    This project addresses this issue in one small area with a view to piloting a methodology. It aims to assess the unpleasantness of gastrointestinal endoscopy. The project will involve patients who are about to undergoing a GI endoscopy as part of their routine clinical care. It will involve the completion of a short questionnaire to assess the patient’s current quality of life and how the procedure they undergo affects it. Consent will be obtained from the patient before the procedure and the patient will complete the questionnaire after the procedure. We will collect completed questionnaires from 25 patients undergoing gastroscopy and 25 undergoing colonoscopy, and will analyse the results to determine how unpleasant the experience was in terms of the loss of quality adjusted hours of life.

  • REC name

    London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    13/LO/1710

  • Date of REC Opinion

    30 Oct 2013

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion