Antispasmodic drugs to reduce discomfort and colonic spasm during barium enemas: comparison of oral hyoscyamine, i.v. glucagon, and no drug

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Glucagon in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Because glucagon is expensive and frequently causes nausea, the researchers evaluated the use of oral hyoscyamine sulfate as an alternate agent and compared it with IV glucagon and no medication.

To evaluate the amount of abdominal discomfort more completely, the researchers asked the last 248 patients to estimate the level of severity of the discomfort (none, mild, moderate, or severe).

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 349 patients taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Glucagon group and the comparison group should start out alike.

The degree of distension of the colon on radiographs obtained after fluoroscopy, the amount of abdominal distress after the procedure, and the number of side effects (nausea, palpitations, blurred vision, dry mouth) were analyzed.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Abdominal Pain, Atropine, Barium Sulfate, Colonic Diseases, Digestive System, Enema and Glucagon.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Glucagon in 349 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 9 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1993 (AJR. American journal of roentgenology), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Glucagon compound page, all human trials.