High quality endoscopy, with your experience at the heart
Gastroscopy (“OGD”)
An upper GI endoscopy, also called a gastroscopy or OGD, looks at your upper digestive system. This includes the food pipe (oesophagus) and stomach, down to the beginning of the small intestine (duodenum).
It’s a common test for patients with swallowing problems, reflux or heartburn, or upper abdominal pain - it can assess for inflammation, ulcers, infections, or cancer in this part of the body.
The procedure involves placing a flexible, fibre-optic telescope camera over your tongue, and then navigating it down past the back of the throat, before it passes into the food pipe. The camera is about the width of your finger, and can be used to take samples (biopsies). The whole test lasts about 20 minutes. Many patients opt for a sedative injection, as well as a local anaesthetic spray, to manage any discomfort.
Colonoscopy
Colonoscopy also uses a flexible telescope camera - to examine the lining of your large bowel (colon). The colonoscope is passed through the bottom (anus), and then navigated carefully around the bowel. Colonoscopy can detect polyps, which are smaller overgrowths of the bowel lining. Many of these polyps can be immediately removed, to reduce the risk of a future bowel cancer. This is called polypectomy.
Many patients will get their diagnosis straight away, at the time of the colonoscopy. If any samples are taken, those results typically come back a few days later.