Anesthesia does not increase the rate of bowel perforation during colonoscopy: a retrospective study.

To compare the complication rates of bowel perforation during colonoscopy performed with or without anesthesia.We retrospectively analyzed 9501 case records of colonoscopy performed at the Chi Mei Medical Center between 2000 and 2004, and compared the rates of bowel perforation between patients receiving anesthesia during the procedure versus those that did not receive anesthesia. Poisson distribution was used for statistical analysis.Only one case of perforation was found in the non-anesthetized group (n = 2460) compared with two cases in the anesthetized group (n = 7041). No statistical difference was found (p = 0.6173; risk ratio = 0.6988; 95% confidence interval by Byar's method = 0.063-7.705).During colonoscopy, anesthesia per se does not affect the rate of bowel perforation.