Gastroenterology
If you have abdominal pain, discomfort or other symptoms which your General Practitioner/doctor believes are related to the stomach, intestine or bowel, you may be referred to our gastroenterology team for further investigations.
In order to ascertain the origin of your symptoms, it may be necessary to look inside your stomach and duodenum (small bowel) or inside the large bowel. These procedures are referred to as endoscopy (gastroscopy) or colonoscopy.
Whilst scans are very useful tests for examining the inside of the abdomen, they do not allow your doctors to look at the inside of the stomach or bowel and always see what is going on in the intestinal lining.
An endoscopy or gastroscopy looks at the stomach & duodenum (1st part of the small bowel) whilst a colonoscopy is used to study the large bowel. A flexible sigmoidoscopy is a colonoscopy that only looks at approximately the first metre of the colon on the left side of the abdomen. These tests make it possible to examine the inner lining of the stomach, duodenum and colon in order to identify ulcers, tears, points of bleeding, polyps, infections, inflammatory conditions and early (or advanced) cancers.
These tests also allow the specialist to take small samples of tissue (biopsies) which are then sent to the laboratory for examination under the microscope.
A “scope” is essentially a small-diameter flexible telescope equipped with a microchip camera and a bright light which allows the specialist to look directly inside the intestine to diagnose disease.
Our Gastroenterology team consists of Mr. Gareth Latin, Mr. Fady Narouz, Mr. Denes Kovacs & Mr. David Deardon.
Endoscopies and colonoscopies are a day case/ambulatory procedure under intravenous sedation. Our team also includes an anaesthetist whose job is to administer adequate & safe sedation, giving you the peace of mind knowing you will be completely unaware of the procedure being carried out.
Endoscopies (gastroscopies) typically take around 10 minutes to complete, however colonoscopy usually takes a little longer.
