Small bowel MRI w/ contrast, lactulose instead of Klean prep?

[lee97]

So finally I have been given my MRI date, April 10th. On the letter it said I would have to drink between 1.5-2.0 litres of Klean prep (if you don't know what that is, it is a common colonscopy prep used in the UK) so you may have had a small bowel MRI drinking a colonscopy prep, but I called as I was worried that there was no way I could drink that much prep and lay still for an hour (when I drank it for my colonoscopy it worked within 20 minutes of drinking the first cup). But fortunately when I called they said the hospital I was having it done at, is trialling lactose.

I've had that as a teenager when I was constipated a lot of the time, but only a couple of tablespoons morning and night and it slowly worked things along. Now the person I called was unable to tell me how much I'll drinking but she thought it would be a litre to 2 litres.

Has anyone here had a small bowel MRI drinking lactulose, if so how much did you drink and did it have a similar affect to colonoscopy prep?

 

[emmaaaargh]

I haven't had lactulose before, but from what I've read of small bowel MRI I might be able to offer an explanation.

Many MRI contrast agents are water-based. Water provides good distention of the stomach and duodenum, but in the jejunum it's absorbed, which makes it sort of useless for imaging the rest of the small bowel. So these contrast agents often have something else added to them, which isn't absorbed by the gut at all, causing water to be drawn into the lumen of the intestine via osmosis, so that the rest of the intestine is distended and decent images can be obtained.

Coincidentally, this is also how Klean-Prep and lactulose work. The main ingredient in Klean-Prep, and lactulose itself, aren't absorbed by the intestine, so they draw water into the lumen of the gut, which causes diarrhoea! Hence why MRI contrast has that effect on so many people.

I've never personally had lactulose, so I can't offer an answer as to how much you'll have to drink, but I usually have to drink a litre of a solution made up of mannitol (a sugar alcohol), so I suspect your experience might be similar. It won't be straight lactulose, though, it'll be diluted to the right concentration (although I don't claim to have any idea what that'd be!).

Hope this helped

 

[my little penguin]

They use this in the US
https://www.rxlist.com/volumen-drug.htm#
Good luck