Small-bowel endoscopy

During the last year several interesting publications have fut ther confirm ed the role of enteroscopy in clinical practice. Of particular interest hav e been various articles concerning the use of two-way enteroscopy in large series of patients with obscure gastrointestinal bleeding or with radiologi cal abnormalities. Reports continue to appear describing a high incidence o f gastroduodenal or colonic lesions that were missed or misinterpreted duri ng previous upper and lon er endoscopies in patients with recurrent obscure bleeding, By contrast. there have been few outcome studies on patients wit h obscure bleeding and conclusions reached are not in full agreement, Other important publications have stressed the value of enteroscopy in selected cases of chronic unexplained diarrhea, for diagnosing small-bowel lesions c aused bg nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and in identifying small-bow el tumors. In addition to numerous reports on intraoperative enteroscopy, t he results of initial experience with laparoscopically assisted enteroscopy have also been reported.