Colon hydration offers alternative to OSP for bowel prep
Some hospitals across the country are choosing an alternative method of prepping the bowel before colonoscopies that does not require patients to drink a gallon of liquid laxatives the day before the procedure, according to EndoNurse. The new procedure is called colon hydrotherapy and involves infusing the colon with warm, filtered, chemical-free water to effectively clear it.
The colon hydration is administered by a trained technician in a private room at a spa and takes about 45 minutes. During that time, the patient lies on a table on his back and sides. The method offers a more soothing environment than a hospital setting with less discomfort than the traditional method. Advocates say this makes colon hydration much easier to handle than drinking large doses of laxatives and staying at home, near the bathroom.
Colon hydrotherapy may catch on with more hospitals and physicians, especially since many of the products used to cleanse the bowel prior to colonoscopy have fallen under a black box warning by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for causing serious kidney injury called acute phosphate nephropathy in some patients who used oral sodium phosphate products (OSP) for bowel cleansing.
The prescription OSP products in question include Salix Pharmaceuticals’ Visicol and Osmo Prep. The FDA also raised serious concerns over over-the-counter OSP products, including Fleet Phospho-soda made by C.B. Fleet. Shortly after the FDA warning in December 2008, C.B. Fleet pulled its over-the-counter products from the market.
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