Agreement between the perception of colon cleansing reported by patients and colon cleansing assessed by a validated colon cleansing scale.

AIMS: Patients' perception of their cleansing quality can guide strategies to improve cleansing during colonoscopy. There are no studies assessing the agreement between the quality of cleansing perceived by patients and cleansing quality assessed during colonoscopy using validated bowel preparation scales. The main aim of this study was to compare the cleansing quality reported by patients with the quality during colonoscopy using the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS). PATIENTS AND METHODS: Consecutive patients referred to an outpatient colonoscopy were included. Four drawings representing different degrees of cleansing were designed. Patients chose the drawing that most resembled the last stool. The predictive ability of the patient's perception and agreement between the patient's perception and the BBPS were calculated. A BBPS score of <2 points in any segment was considered inadequate. RESULTS: Six hundred and thirty-three patients were included (age: 62.8±13.7 years, male: 53.4%). Overall, 107 patients (16.9%) had inadequate cleansing during colonoscopy, and in 12.2% of cases, the patient's perception was poor. The patient's perception compared to the quality of cleanliness during colonoscopy presented a positive and negative predictive value of 54.6% and 88.3%, respectively. The agreement between patient perception and the BBPS was significant (P<0.001), although fair (k=0.37). The results were similar in a validation cohort of 378 patients (k=0.41). CONCLUSIONS: The cleanliness perceived by the patient and the quality of cleanliness using a validated scale were correlated, although fair. However, this measure satisfactorily identified patients with adequate preparation. Cleansing rescue strategies may target patients who self-report improper cleaning. Registration number of the trial: NCT03830489.

Design and validation of an artificial intelligence system to detect the quality of colon cleansing before colonoscopy.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Patients' perception of their bowel cleansing quality may guide rescue cleansing strategies before colonoscopy. The main aim of this study was to train and validate a convolutional neural network (CNN) for classifying rectal effluent during bowel preparation intake as "adequate" or "inadequate" cleansing before colonoscopy. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients referred for outpatient colonoscopy were asked to provide images of their rectal effluent during the bowel preparation process. The images were categorized as adequate or inadequate cleansing based on a predefined 4-picture quality scale. A total of 1203 images were collected from 660 patients. The initial dataset (799 images), was split into a training set (80%) and a validation set (20%). The second dataset (404 images) was used to develop a second test of the CNN accuracy. Afterward, CNN prediction was prospectively compared with the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS) in 200 additional patients who provided a picture of their last rectal effluent. RESULTS: On the initial dataset, a global accuracy of 97.49%, a sensitivity of 98.17% and a specificity of 96.66% were obtained using the CNN model. On the second dataset, an accuracy of 95%, a sensitivity of 99.60% and a specificity of 87.41% were obtained. The results from the CNN model were significantly associated with those from the BBPS (P<0.001), and 77.78% of the patients with poor bowel preparation were correctly classified. CONCLUSION: The designed CNN is capable of classifying "adequate cleansing" and "inadequate cleansing" images with high accuracy.