Spiral enteroscopy: from “new kid on the block” to established deep small-bowel enteroscopy tool

Abstract

During the past 10 years small-bowel diagnostics and endoscopic therapy have emerged from the technically rather challenging push-enteroscopy and the occasional perioperative enteroscopy in patients with severe persistent gastrointestinal bleeding, to generally available and advanced deep small-bowel enteroscopy. First, with the introduction of capsule endoscopy in the year 2000, a new era of small-bowel diagnostics was entered [1]. The introduction of capsule endoscopy was quickly followed in 2001 by the launch of the double-balloon enteroscopy (DBE) system [2]. DBE combines excellent small-bowel diagnostic performance and, more importantly and in addition to capsule endoscopy, the possibility to perform diagnostic tissue sampling and therapeutic through-the-endoscope interventions.