Original ArticleStool Consistency, but Not Frequency, Correlates with Total Gastrointestinal Transit Time in Children
Section snippets
Methods
A prospective, observational, case-control study was conducted in 80 consecutive children (42 boys and 38 girls, mean ± SD age 7.7 ± 3.3 years, age range 4-15.4 years) referred to the Department of Pediatrics of the University of Naples “Federico II” from March 2011 to March 2012.
The case group was composed of 44 consecutive patients affected by functional constipation (25 boys and 19 girls, mean ± SD age 7.8 ± 3.3 years, age range 4-15.4 years), defined using Rome III criteria.10 The control
Results
All enrolled children completed the study. Study groups were well matched with respect to age and sex (Table II). Mean WGTT, measured by ROMs, was 63.4 hours for constipated children compared with 30.1 hours for healthy children (P < .001). Constipated children presented a mean weekly BM frequency of 4.8 compared with 5.7 for nonconstipated children (P < .001). The average BSFS score was 3.1 for constipated children compared with a score of 4.2 for nonconstipated children (P < .001). There was
Discussion
Stool form, rather than stool frequency, correlates with WGTT in children. The BSFS should be considered as a valuable tool for evaluating stool form in children. Bekkali et al7 tried to develop a scale useful to describe and differentiate physiologic and pathologic stool appearances in infants, but they were not able to correlate this stool form scale with colonic transit time. Lane et al6 proposed that a modified BSFS, decreasing the number of stool categories from 7 to 5, should be used in
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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.