Endoscopy

An endoscopy is used to examine a person's digestive tract.

Endoscopy is a medical procedure that uses an endoscope.

Generally speaking, endoscopy is a safe procedure.

If you're worried, go for an endoscopy to have it checked out.

Several experts have praised this new medical tool to examine patients. They say it shows the small intestine better than X-rays or a method called endoscopy. Endoscopy uses a long thin tube with a small camera on the end. Doctors place the tube down a patient’s throat all the way to the small intestine. The camera looks for growths or other problems. But endoscopes cannot reach all the way through the six meters of the small intestine. Endoscopy also requires medicine to ease pain or to put the patient to sleep. This examination must be done in a hospital.

I had a colonoscopy and upper abdominal endoscopy.

But less complex scopes also pose contamination risks – and they’re used on far more people: Each year in the United States, doctors perform more than 15 million colonoscopies and 7 million endoscopies of the upper GI tract.

One insurance company, UnitedHealthcare, has announced that starting in June, members with commercial plans seeking gastroenterology endoscopy services – including colonoscopies – will be required to have “prior authorizations” for those services.