When planning a colonoscopy, individual and work-related characteristics of the patient should be taken into account. A split dose for bowel preparation, painless procedure, and counteracting gastrointestinal symptoms can minimize the impact of a colonoscopy on work productivity.
Many patients who have to undergo a colonoscopy have a job and the colonoscopy could affect work productivity, for example due to missed work days and/or reduced efficiency. Researchers from Italy investigated the impact of a colonoscopy on work productivity and which factors influence this.
To this end, they conducted a prospective, observational, multicenter study in 10 hospitals. Data was collected on 1,137 patients who had to undergo colonoscopy for a variety of reasons, including patient characteristics, work productivity, symptoms and conditions before, during and after the procedure. Outcomes studied were job disruption due to procedure preparation, absenteeism, and decreased job performance after the procedure. Overall, 30.5% of patients reported experiencing at least 1 of these outcomes.
The analyzes showed that decreased job performance was associated with bowel prep schedule (full dose on the day of procedure vs split dose: adjusted odds ratio (OR) 4.04; 95% CI 1.43-11 .5), a high symptom score during bowel prep (OR 3.21; 95% CI 1.15-8.95) and pain during the procedure (OR 2.47; 95% CI 1.40-4.35 ). With longer working hours and in less ‘comfortable’ jobs, absenteeism was more frequent (p for trend = 0.06) and less performance at work (p for trend = 0.01), just as with gastrointestinal symptoms for and after colonoscopy.
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