Monday, August 29, 2011

Gastric Emptying Scan

KayTar had her gastric emptying scan today, or as she describes it, "I was taped to a table and shoved in a machine FOR HOURS!"


She was NOT a fan of being restrained. She let out a few peals of her patented, eardrum-rupturing KayTar screams as they taped her down, but she calmed pretty quickly with some help from Spongebob on the monitor. She couldn't use her hands, though, so I had to do things like rub her eyes or scratch her nose or wipe her tears. :(  We rigged up her Gee so she could rub her lips on it as needed for comfort. Once she resigned herself to her fate, which happened fairly quick, it was an easy enough test.

  

We didn't get any results at the appointment, but our fabulous pediatrician called me with them this afternoon. A normal result is half-emptying in 60 minutes, KayTar half-emptied in 73 minutes, which is only slightly longer than normal. However, she was only given 3 ounces...so it took 73 minutes to empty out 1.5 ounces, which seems like a long time to move such a little amount. We've never done one of these before and the pediatrician doesn't have much experience interpreting the results, so she can't say if the rate of emptying is volume specific or stable across the board...so I don't know what to make of it until we see her GI on the 13th. These tests are the sort you take with a grain of salt anyway, so we'll see what her thoughts are before changing things up. For the time being, her 4 ounce feeds every 2 hours seem to be well-tolerated so we're sticking with it. Oh, and they saw her refluxing again in this scan, too. We may need to add in another medication to help control that. I'm on pins and needles for her appointments the next few weeks; we follow up with her mito doc next Tuesday, have our first visit with pulmonary the following Monday, and follow up with GI the day after that. Here's hoping we learn something new and useful from all of this testing!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kyla,

I was told (I have had many) that they can't go by volume of what was eaten, just by the time it too "do it's thing!"

What did they have KayTar eat?

I am wondering if they if changed the protocol since my last one. They have wanted me to repeat one for some time, and I haven't been able to.

Certainly, I can share more, if your interested, by privately. I have learned my lessong the hard way by sharing too much, publically.

KayTar, you did great. As an adult, I was not happy about being stuck to a table for all those hours. You rock!

Anonymous said...

Wow! Lots of typos at 2:30 (am)! Sorry!

Take care,

Jodi

InTheFastLane said...

Poor kiddo! I would hate to be restrained to. That would be the worst part for me.

leah said...

The GES scan interpretation is so all-over-the-board. It seems everyone does it a little bit differently, and interprets it differently, too! It drives me crazy. Nolan has only had one scan, and he was 27% empty after 60 minutes (they stopped the test then). He had whatever we brought him to eat/drink, so he ate 2 bites of cookie and then drank about 3 sips of milk.

With a 27% emptying, he was considered "borderline" for DGE - but in other hospitals, he would be a definite case of DGE. I wish there was more consistency!

When our GI doc saw the scan she said it was done wrong because it had to be with scrambled eggs, etc. Ugh.

I am glad KayTar did OK through the test - it is rough on little ones to be strapped down for so long (thank goodness for TV)!