Small bowel capsule endoscopy: It's time for quality assurance.

Quality in the delivery of healthcare has received intense emphasis in the past decade, beginning with the efforts of the Institute of Medicine to define national problems with variation in practice, safety, and lack of accountability in healthcare [ [1] Petersen B.T. Quality assurance for endoscopists. Best Pract Res Clin Gastroenterol. 2011; 25: 349-360 Google Scholar ]. This mainstream focus on quality improvement now encompasses all areas of medicine, including gastrointestinal endoscopy, as evidenced by the establishment of quality committees within many of the major gastroenterology organizations, and by the collaborative development of general and procedure-specific quality metrics. The quality of health care can be measured by comparing the performance of an individual or a group of individuals with an ideal auditable benchmark [ 1 Petersen B.T. Quality assurance for endoscopists. Best Pract Res Clin Gastroenterol. 2011; 25: 349-360 Google Scholar , 2 Rutter M.D. Senore C. Bisschops R. Domagk D. Valori R. Kaminski M.F. et al. The European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Quality Improvement Initiative: developing performance measures. Endoscopy. 2016; 48: 81-89 Google Scholar , 3 Cohen J. Pike I.M. Defining and measuring quality in endoscopy. Gastrointest Endosc. 2015; 81: 1-2 Google Scholar ]. Therefore, the assurance of high quality in endoscopy services requires, first of all, a thorough collection of performance data. Feeding back these data to endoscopists provides metrics that may be used to target interventions designed to improve performance [ [4] Rees C.J. Thomas-Gibson S. Bourke M.J. Rex D. Fockens P. Kaminski M.F. et al. Managing underperformance in endoscopy: a pragmatic approach. Gastrointest Endosc. 2018; 88: 737-744 Google Scholar ]. The above mentioned general principles have been well known for years, but up to now they have mostly been restricted to upper and lower gastrointestinal endoscopy [ [5] https://www.asge.org/home/practice-support/guidelines#quality-in-endoscopy. [Last accessed 11 December 2018]. Google Scholar , [6] https://www.esge.com/esge-guidelines.html. [Last accessed 11 December 2018[. Google Scholar ]. Adherence to European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy recommendations of endoscopists performing small bowel capsule endoscopy in ItalyDigestive and Liver DiseaseVol. 51Issue 6PreviewThe European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) has recently issued a technical review focused on small bowel capsule endoscopy (SBCE). Full-Text PDF