AT A GLANCE

A new study published in BMC Gastroenterology reports that providing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients with a brief educational video intervention did not improve bowel preparation before colonoscopy.¹

“Colonoscopy is important for diagnosis, assessment, and dysplasia screening in IBD. A good bowel preparation is required for complete and adequate assessment,” explain study authors Kaur et al. “Patients have a central role in the bowel preparation, and compliance with instructions predicts an optimal preparation.”

However, they add, “bowel preparation is a complex and has been found to be inadequate in approximately 5%–60% of colonoscopy examinations.”

In response, as part of a randomized, assessor-blinded parallel arm trial with 1:1 allocation, these authors assessed the effectiveness of a brief educational intervention on colonoscopy preparation and experience in patients with IBD.

For study purposes, 130 patients with IBD undergoing colonoscopy were randomized to a control group (standard preparation with written instructions) or an experimental group (additional brief video educational intervention). The primary study outcome of interest was the adequacy of bowel preparation (Boston bowel preparation score of ≥6 points).

According to the authors, 107 patients were finally analyzed. Notably, adequate bowel preparation occurred at similar rates in the experimental group and the control group (43.1% vs. 35%).

Similar rates between groups were also recorded for the following: perfect preparation (7.8% vs. 8.9%), worsening of disease activity (3.9% vs. 3.7%), time to cecal intubation (median, 240 vs. 228 s), tolerance (45.1% vs. 30.4%), and willingness to undergo a repeat colonoscopy (54.9% vs. 55.4%).

“A brief educational video intervention did not improve bowel preparation in patients with IBD undergoing colonoscopy,” conclude the authors.

Reference

1.     Kaur S, Jindal N, Kaur A, et al. A randomized control trial to assess the effectiveness of a brief educational intervention on colonoscopy preparation and experience in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. BMC Gastroenterol. 2025;25(1):625.