The Effect of Chewing Gum on Small Bowel Transit Time

The Effect of Chewing Gum on Small Bowel Transit Time: a Prospective Randomized Trial.

The purpose of this study is to see if chewing sugarless chewing gum alters the time it takes for a capsule endoscopy to travel through the stomach and small bowel, and to see if more/less capsule endoscopes reach the large bowel.

The subjects will include patients already referred to us for a capsule endoscopy (CE) in this unit. We have calculated how many patients we need from small bowel transit times from the last 100 patients who had a CE at our centre. We will include 122. These will be randomly divided into two groups. The patients (chew chewing gum) and the controls (do not chew chewing gum).

Inclusion Criteria:

• All out-patients > 19 years old presenting for capsule endoscopy

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients on narcotics
• Patients on motility enhancing and/or slowing drugs should stop these at least 5 days prior to the procedure or be excluded from the study.
• Patients, who have proven or suspected obstruction of the bowel.
• Patients, who have had prior small bowel and/or gastric surgery.
• Patients with an ileostomy.
• Patients who have a known and/or have a history of swallowing disorder
• Patients with diabetes and/or hypo-/hyper- thyroidism
• Patients in whom the capsule become impacted at a stricture (these patients will be taken out of the study and given the necessary medical/surgical treatment).