A new study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology supports the idea that physician fatigue causes less accurate colonoscopy readings in the afternoon than in the morning, according to a report by Reuters.
Studies have already found that afternoon colonoscopies are less likely to catch polyps than morning ones, but the new research in AJG showed the gap disappears when doctors work a half-day rather than a full one, indicating physician fatigue was the problem.
The study found that when physicians worked a full day, polyps were detected in 26 percent of procedures in the morning but only in 21 percent in the afternoon. That difference did not exist for physicians on half-day schedules, where polyps were found in about 27 percent of procedures done in the morning or afternoon.
However, the authors cited other explanations for lower afternoon detection rates, such as patients' colonoscopy preparation. While morning colonoscopy patients take the full bowel prep the night before, some experts recommend that afternoon patients take half of it the night before and the rest on the morning of the procedure. Some day this may not be as effective as taking the whole bowel prep the morning of the procedure.
Read the Reuters report on colonoscopies.
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