title: How much helpful is the capsule endoscopy for the diagnosis of small bowel lesions?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the practically usefulness and diagnostic yield of this new method in a group of patients with suspected small bowel lesions.
  
  
  METHODS
  Capsule endoscopic (CE) examination by using M2A capsule endoscope TM (Given Imaging, Yoqneam, Israel) was performed in thirty nine patients (26 males, 13 females) with suspected small intestinal lesions. The composing of the patients was as follows: obscure gastrointestinal bleeding in twenty three patients, known Crohn's disease in 6 patients, in whom CE was used to evaluate the severity and extension of the diseases, chronic diarrhea in 8 patients, abdominal pain in one patient and malignancy in one patient with unknown origin.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In two patients CE failed. Different abnormalities were revealed in 26 patients overall. Detection rate of abnormalities was highest among patients with obscure gastrointestinal bleeding and the source of bleeding was demonstrated in 17 of 23 patients with obscure bleeding (73.9%). Entero-Behcet was diagnosed in two patients by CE as a source of obscure gastrointestinal bleeding. In 6 patients with known Crohn's disease, CE revealed better evaluation of the disease extension. In 3 of 8 (37.5%) patients with chronic diarrhea; CE revealed some mucosal abnormalities as the cause of chronic diarrhea. In a patient with unexplained abdominal pain and in a cancer patient with unknown origin, CE examination was normal.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In our relatively small series, we found that capsule endoscopy is a useful diagnostic tool particularly in diagnosis of obscure gastrointestinal bleeding, chronic diarrhea and in estimating the extension of Crohn's disease.
authors.affiliation: Hacettepe University, School of medicine, Department of Gastroenterology, Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Osman
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ersoy
authors.forename: Bulent
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sivri
authors.forename: Serap
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Arslan
authors.forename: Figen
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Batman
authors.forename: Yusuf
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bayraktar
mesh_terms: D015746:Abdominal Pain / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002214:Capsules; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003424:Crohn Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D003967:Diarrhea / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D016099:Endoscopy, Gastrointestinal / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006471:Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D007410:Intestinal Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology*; D007414:Intestinal Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D007421:Intestine, Small / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012720:Severity of Illness Index
chemical_list: D002214:Capsules