General anaesthesia during colonoscopy increased detection of serrated polyps

American scientists conducted a retrospective cohort study and concluded that general anaesthesia with propofol during colonoscopy increases the likelihood of detecting serrated polyps - difficult to diagnose precancerous growths of the colon. A publication about this appeared in the journal Anesthesiology. Aurora Quaye of Tufts University and colleagues analysed four years of data from patients over 50 years old from the New Hampshire Colonoscopy Registry. The final analysis included more than 54,000 screening examinations (diagnostic examinations were not included in the work), which used either light sedation in which the patient remained conscious (24751 colonoscopies) or short-term general anaesthesia with propofol (29312 colonoscopies). Statistical processing of the data was performed by multivariable logistic regression with adjustment for associated factors.

With general anaesthesia, the proportion of patients with detected dentate polyps was significantly higher, 34 versus 24.5 percent. Overall, this method of anaesthesia showed an advantage in the diagnosis of any entity: for tumours, the odds ratio (OR) was 1.25; for adenomas, 1.07; and for dentate polyps, 1.51. When the sample was narrowed down to the probability of receiving treatment depending on the clustering of patients at the endoscopist level, a similar pattern persisted only for dentate polyps (OR 1.13).