kaylasmom, in an effort to rule out (or support) a diagnosis of gastroparesis, is checking into a hospital for the day this Friday. She has been scheduled for a stomach emptying test. In this procedure, the patient is asked to eat a bolus of food that has been treated with an isotope (scrambled eggs with iodine, in this instance, as I understand it); following this, a Geiger counter will be placed against her abdomen, and the rate at which her stomach empties will be monitored over a period of several hours.
Does anybody here have any idea what this is going to taste like? I know that the table salt I serve her has iodine, but something tells me that even if they used only the specific isotope necessary for the test in the iodized salt, a standard-sized serving would not be nearly sufficient. So I’m guessing (and kaylasmom is fearing) that it’s going to be kind of rank. We don’t like to borrow trouble, though, so any information we can obtain in advance will be appreciated.
Also, what is this type of test likely to do to her appetite over the next couple of days?
I have been told iodine has a metallic (coppery) taste. This was from conversations with someone using it as water purification while camping and they said the taste was rather nasty (this was also many years ago…perhaps things are different today with such things).
Take that FWIW. That iodine may bear no relation to what the hospital uses or any of a number of other factors (cooking for instance) which may affect this.
Weird. In animals, when we want to determine gastric emptying, we feed the critter barium (which tastes like marshmellow fluff) and then take x-rays.
Anyone know what the advantage of using radiolabled iodine is? It seems like you would get less anatomical information and only the same amount of GI transit time information.
I was wondering about barium too… I would have thought using a radioopaque substance and a few small doses of x-rays was preferable to ingesting a beta emitter with a multi-hour half-life purely from the standpoint of radiation dose.
Heh, yeah, there was a strong scrambled egg and toast flavor, now that you mention it…
I had to have the test because I had an upper endoscopy, and although I hadn’t eaten since 11:30pm the previous night, there was still food in my stomach. The doc found that unusual, so he ordered the food emptying study, which didn’t find any problems.
I would guess that the radiation load for the radio-iodine is less than that for the multiple x-rays required, and if the anatomical detail is not actually required, then why gather the additional data at a risk to the patient.
The “iodine” used in water purification is both highly concentrated and a mixture of its different acidic forms.
The one used in radio tests is a single salt - if it’s, say, NaI, it may not taste so different from the iodized salt sold for table use. It doesn’t have to be as concentrated as the one for the water purification.
