Endoscopy

Hello everybody,

I am Doctor Dr. Gurwant Singh Lamba, Gastroenterologist. I look after diseases of the liver and the digestive system. So today we are going to talk about investigation which is very commonly used investigation these days but about which lot of patients have got lot of queries and questions and they appear in their minds and they are generally apprehensive of getting that investigation done and investigation I am talking about is Endoscopy.

You all must have heard of this term Endoscopy which is generally done to diagnose many of the digestive disease problems and it is often prescribed by doctors. So what I have seen is that there are lot of myth and misunderstandings about this procedure in the patient’s mind and they are reluctant to get this, they have heard things from people around without any substantive evidence or anything and they are generally not very willing to get this investigation done. So what I am going to enlighten you today is about Endoscopy.

Now, believe me, it’s a very very simple investigation, the upper GI endoscopy as we call, is to see the about the problems which may be there in the upper digestive track. With Endoscopy we can see the food pipe, we can see the stomach and we can see the upper part of the intestine. So any disease in this area which can be seen directly, we can put endoscope and we can see these regions directly and then accordingly we can do the treatment. So it’s a very very useful tool, it’s a very simple investigation. It doesn’t require any admission. It can be done on openly basis. It can be done without any anesthesia or without any sedation but suppose somebody is very apprehensive, so in those patients we can always give a short sedation for few minutes and do the Endoscopy procedure. In every Endoscopy procedure, diagnostic don’t take more than 2 minutes to finish. So it’s a very brief simple procedure and one can go to one’s work or one can go to whatever he has to do after the Endoscopy.

You don’t have to take any leave, you don’t have to miss any appointments because of it. So it is a very simple thing and it is done with the help of a flexible you can say flexible long camera. It’s a very sophisticated instrument made from very sophisticated rubber material with some light fibers. It’s a very smooth flexible instrument which causes no trauma to the body, which causes no injury to the body in any way and it’s a costly instrument and the Endoscopy is done through that and the patient is generally in lying done position, we put him the endoscope in his mouth and then within 2 minutes we examine his whole upper digestive track through it and lot of things and lot of diseases which can be diagnosed through it specially ulcers in the stomach, ulcers in the food pipe, severe acidity, tumors of the food pipe, tumors of the stomach, diurnal ulcers.

There are so many different diseases. It’s very useful tool in liver disease patients where we can pick up some veins which get dilated and their food pipe and the stomach. So all these disease can be seen with the help of this endoscope. Endoscopy is not only a diagnostic tool, it’s a very important therapeutic tool also. There are lots of diseases which we can treat with Endoscopy also. For example a patient comes with the bit blood in vomiting. It’s a very common situation we get such patients every day. They vomited and there was blood in it. So our aim is to do the Endoscopy quickly in that patiently, see from where the bleeding is occurring and suppose there is a tear in his mucosa, suppose there is a ulcer there which is bleeding, we can inject medicines there, we can spray medicines over there, we can do laser therapy over it, we can put some clips over it to stop the bleeding if there is a vessel which has punctured and bleeding.

So there are lots of therapeutic applications also where a treatment can be done through Endoscopy and many of these treatments may be for example in case of bleeding, may be life-saving treatments and instead of the patient going in for an extensive long surgery which will which will require time, lot of rehabilitation time after the surgery, simple endoscopic procedure which can be finished in few minutes can take care of the problem. There are patients who have tumors which are bleeding, we have modalities which can control tumor bleed also. Then for diagnostic purposes we can also take samples from inside and get them tested. So all these things can be done with the help of Endoscope.

Another very interesting thing which we do with Endoscope is removal of foreign bodies. You may have seen there are many small children who swallow coins or pens or even some older patients also accidentally swallow something and it goes inside the stomach and obviously it may a needle, it may be a pen, it may be a clip anything. So all these things now don’t require any surgery. We can with the help of endoscope in a few minutes almost every kind of foreign body which has gone inside and which is still there in the upper GI can be removed with the help of Endoscope.

Then we can do many pediatric procedure through Endoscope for example somebody who would have tumor of the food pipe, he cannot eat. So we can insert a stent or an artificial food pipe and make him eat. If there is a blockage in the stomach and the food is not going ahead, we can again we can put in a pipe to open that blockage where the patient can then start eating. So these are the various things which can be done by Endoscope. It’s a very useful and simple tool and I think it has helped us in saving many lives. It has helped us in reducing morbidity in many patients. It has helped us in diagnosing so many diseases.

So I think there should be no fear in getting endoscopy. It’s a very simple harmless procedure. There are hardly any side effects of the procedure that matters in complication of the Endoscopy. So if an Endoscopy is prescribed by the specialist, don’t hesitate to get it done and because it is very good tool to diagnose so many diseases and timely diagnosis will help us in treating the disease faster and in a much better way.

Thank you.