Introduction:

Colorectal cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide in men as well as in women. Colonoscopy is the best study in order to detect colorectal neoplasms, however the precision of the study could turn out suboptimal. The quality of bowel preparation is critical in order to guarantee the success of the procedure. An alternative bowel preparation modality is the use of a split-dose regime, which has shown an improvement in the scales of bowel preparation and a probable increase in polyp detection. Some studies have shown that one of the most important factors in bowel preparation is the education of the patient.

Objective:

To determine de effectiveness of the split-dose bowel preparation versus the single dose modality in adult patients undergoing a colonoscopy and which will be evaluated using the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale.

Materials and methods:

In order to do this prospective and randomized pilot study we included patients from the Hospital General “Dr. Manuel Gea González” that had to undergo a colonoscopy from May 2019 with a deadline of January 2020, over the age of 18 years, any sex, calculating a total of 50 patients per group. Inferential statistical analysis was applied.

Results:

A total of 47 patients have been recruited up until now, 29 of the are part of the single dose group and 18 are parte of the split-dose group. There was no significant statistical difference when comparing the demographic variables between both groups. The adherence to each regimen was similar in both groups. A total of 64.3% of the patients in the single dose group had lesions identified in comparison with de split dose group in which 63.2% of the patients had no lesions reported, with a significant statistical difference (p=0.04). Deferment was similar in both groups and no adverse events were reported in either group. The probability of finding a lesion with an acceptable Boston score (>= 6) in patients in the single dose group was greater, with an OR of 3.03 (IC 95% 0.54- 17.21), although without significant statistical difference (p=0.21).

Conclusion:

It will be necessary to wait for the final results of this pilot study and according to those results evaluate the need to perform a larger study due to the fact that we did find a tendency to detect a greater amount of lesions in the single dose group, but because of the size of the sample up until now we are unable to have definite conclusions.