Bowel preparation at home in elderly people

doi:10.1136/bmj.314.7073.74

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Patients should be warned not to drink too much or too little fluid

M Lewis, Senior house officera,
F Rugg-Gunn, Senior house officera,
C Don, Senior house officera,
W Woods

Department of Surgery, Worthing Hospital, Worthing BN11 2DH
^b Leicester General Hospital, Leicester LE5 4PW

Editor—T D Heymann and colleagues report on the relative safety of bowel preparation at home in elderly people; none of their patients required admission to hospital.1 We wish to report on two patients admitted in February and April of this year with serious complications of bowel preparation with sodium picosulphate (Picolax, Nordic) at home.

The first patient was an 85 year old woman who presented with a score on the Glasgow coma scale of 5/15 and a tonic clonic seizure, having drunk some 5 litres …