You’ve scheduled your colonoscopy and you’re ready to do the prep work, but what comes after the procedure? A colonoscopy can help detect colon cancer early and even prevent cancer, making it potentially lifesaving. Nicholas Daane, DO, with Avera Gastroenterology explains what you can expect once you complete your colonoscopy.
What happens after the procedure?
Immediately after the procedure you go to a recovery room where you have a recovery nurse who watches your vitals for 10-20 minutes. The medications they use nowadays wear off pretty quickly, so you feel back to normal pretty quickly and can still go back to whatever diet you were on previously. The only thing we ask is that you avoid driving or doing anything too strenuous the day of the procedure, but then first thing that following morning, you can go back to all your normal activities.
What can I expect for recovery at home?
Sometimes people experience a little bit of gas or bloating because we have to put in carbon dioxide to open up the colon so we can see what we are doing and find polyps in the majority of procedures. But the good thing about the carbon dioxide is it diffuses on its own, so that kind of discomfort goes away on its own really quickly. Otherwise no, there really isn’t any pain or discomfort after the procedure that day that I would expect at all.
When do I get my results?
The nice thing about endoscopy is that if right after the procedure, if there is anything obvious or concerning, we will come into the room and talk to you about it, get treatment started right then and there if necessary, for more routine things. If we found polyps, it takes about two weeks to get all those results, the pathology back and then usually a letter in the mail that describes the pathology and then also when we recommend you have a repeat colonoscopy.
What if a polyp is found?
Not all polyps turn into cancer, but almost every kind of colon cancer that we know of starts off as a polyp, so that is why we take the strategy of removing the polyps to just eliminate that risk. And there’s a lot of characteristics that go into the specific kind of polyp as far as whether it is high risk or low risk that we work through with our pathology team and helps guide that interval in which you can go between colonoscopies. If you don’t have any polyps or family history of colon cancer you can go 10 years in between colonoscopies.
Learn more about scheduling your colonoscopy.
