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Dr Sarmed Sami
Digestive Health UK
What is endoscopy?
Dr Sarmed Sami defines an endoscopy as a test whereby a camera is used to take a look inside your bowel, stomach, or intestines, and can enter from your mouth (gastroscopy) or bottom end (colonoscopy)
Transcript
Endoscopy is a test whereby a camera is used to look at the inside of your gut or intestines. This could be a camera that we can pass through the mouth, into the gullet and look at the stomach, the upper part of the gut. It could be a camera that you use from the bottom end, where we look at the large bowel, which is called a colonoscopy. It could be a camera we use at the small bowel, which is called a video capsule endoscopy, that is simply swallowed and takes pictures of your small intestine. There are other cameras that we use also for the bile ducts and other parts of the gut, but typically the word endoscopy, when we use it, we mean either a gastroscopy, which is the camera from the top end, or a colonoscopy, which is a camera from the bottom end.