Eating the night before a sonogram?!


Question:

Eating the night before a sonogram?

My uncle is going in for an abdominal ultrasound for the liver tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure he ate the rest of the cake that was in the refrigerator (he loves to eat). That was a good amount of cake.

He ate it around 11:30PM, and as I recall you are not supposed to eat anything 8-12 hours before an ultrasound. His appointment is at 8:30AM tomorrow.

My question is whether or not the cake will have any effect on the accuracy of his ultrasound.

We're all worried about him. Oh and serious answers only please. And I'm not referring to myself here, it really is my uncle.

Additional Details

4 weeks ago
CORRECTION!!!!: Err.......... silly me I meant ultrasound, NOT sonogram lol.


Answers:

For a morning abdominal u/s procedure, we ask the patient to be NPO (nothing by mouth) from midnight, the night before. For an afternoon appt, we ask the patient to be NPO for 6 hours. This might vary from facility to facility or even reading radiologist to reading radiologist. His best bet is to tell the u/s tech what he ate and when at the start of the exam.

The NPO part is for two reasons. First, we want to reduce the amount of gas in the bowel. Food creates additional gas, and u/s cannot see through gas (air). This is also why we try to do abd. u/s in the mornings....we humans are less gassy in the morning. The second reason is to make sure there is bile in the gallbladder. When you eat, the gb releases bile to help digest your food. A empty gallbladder is not seen on u/s, so it would be impossible to see if there are gallstones present. An abd. u/s cannot see the stomach or bowel, due to the bowel gas, by the way. Those structures are visualized with barium x-ray studies or CT scans.

Also, an ultrasound is the same as a sonogram. It is like saying automobile or car....same thing, just different terminology!




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