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Colonoscopy failure resulting from unsatisfactory bowel preparation is a common problem for endoscopists — as many as 6.5% of colonoscopies fail for this reason (Am J Gastroenterol 2006; 101:2726). Worse, almost one fourth of colonoscopies that fail because of poor bowel preparation will also fail in subsequent attempts. Is there any way to predict which patients are at risk for failure of repeat procedures?
In this retrospective study of 6990 colonoscopies performed at a tertiary referral hospital, 307 procedures (4.4%) failed because of inadequate preparation. Data were available on 235 repeat colonoscopies, and, of these, 54 (23%) failed the second time for the same reason. Failure rates for patients undergoing third and fourth attempts w…