Colonoscopy
A colonoscopy (or lower endoscopy) is when a medical provider, such as a gastroenterologist, uses a flexible tube with a camera and light to look at your colon because he doesn't want to get his arm stuck "elbow deep" into your rectum.
Who Can Perform Colonoscopies
Anyone really.
Indications for Colonoscopy
Only one: You're willing to undergo having a metal snake inserted into your bum hole.
How to Prepare for Colonoscopy
The most important part of the colonoscopy is the bowel prep. For more information, please refer to Bowel Prep, GoLYTELY, or GoHEAVILY.
The Colonoscopy in Art & Media
The importance of the colonoscopy and how much it dominates the mindset of human beings is reflected in art and media throughout history.
- In 2013, Playstation released a video game called Colonoscopy 2016 which finally brought the colonoscopy home to the video-game generation. Game-play is first person from the perspective of a gastroenterologist, thus making Colonoscopy 2016 the first-game scoper game ever created. The game garnered positive reviews because of the variety of patients (such as demented and anticoagulated) and scenarios (such as drug allergies and dirty colonoscopes), which provided endless hours of gameplay. Plus the unique scoring system for rewarding retroflexion and identification of the ileocecal valve while penalizing bowel perforation added to the value of the experience.
- Amidst the Pokémon Go release on July 6, 2016, gastroenterologist Jonathan Wilcox spotted a sigmoid Pikachu during a routine augmented-reality colonoscopy.[1]
The Future of Colonoscopies
Google has already said the future of colonoscopies is here when they began introducing self-driving colonoscopes or colonoscopy drones to the public.[2] Like their self-driving cars, Google's new colonoscopes are not without issues: the self-driving 'colonoscopy will still occasionally veer into someone else's colon and get into an accident.
However, concerns over the costs associated with colonscopies have led one Chicago-area hospital to replace colonoscopes, which can cost up to tens of thousands of dollars, with plastic reachers from the Home Depot, which cost only maybe $40 a pop.[3]
References