Does it matter how long the small bowel is?

Abstract

The small bowell (SB) is a very long organ hardly accessible to conventional endoscopy. The revolution entailed by its complete diagnostic exploration with capsule endoscopy (CE) has led to a change in traditional surgical management and its related gold standard - intraoperative enteroscopy. CE is currently the first-line diagnostic strategy for the SB. An emergent technique in its wake has played a key role in the management of patients with SB conditions: to wit, device-assisted enteroscopy (DAE). Thus were developed first double-balloon enteroscopy (DBE), then single-balloon enteroscopy, and most recently motorized spiral enteroscopy.