Introduction: Double balloon enteroscopy (DBE) is one of the newest among endoscopic techniques used in diagnosis of the digestive tract diseases--particularly in small bowel's lesions.
Materials and methods: The retrospective analysis of patients' data from 2008 to 2012 in the Department of Digestive Tract Diseases, UM was made. Case histories were analised and evaluated for sex, age, clinical symptoms, results of additional examinations and indications. The course of the examination, its result, complications and role in final diagnosis were also checked.
Results: During the analysed period DBE was attempted 71 times DBE among 42 patients (17 women and 25 men; the age was 44.5 years ± 17.5 years). The most frequent indication for DBE was occult gastrointestinal bleeding--34 patients (80.9%). Among the other patients, the clinical image suggested Crohn's disease (4 cases--9.5%), suspicion of small bowel's neoplasm (2 patients--4.8%), familiar adenomatous polyposis with a need to make polypectomy (1 case--2.4%) and state after bariatric surgery to extract moved gastric balloon (1 patient--2.4%). Small bowel's lesions were detected in 21 patients (50%)--8 polyps, 8--aphthaes and inflammatory changes, 3--vascular lesions, 2--smoothing villi. In four cases the polypectomy was made. The anaesthetic complications appeared with two patients (4,8%). Complications being a result of performed DBE was observed in one case (2.4%).
Conclusions: Double balloon enteroscopy is safe endoscopic procedure and it plays a key role in diagnosis of patients with gastrointestinal bleeding.