Everything About Colonoscopy Has Improved. Except the Part You Do Yourself.

For more than forty years, nearly every part of the colonoscopy has been modernized: the scope, the imaging, the sedation, even the way quality is measured. The one exception is the preparation, which patients still manage at home much as they did in 1980. This post traces how bowel prep became the last unmodernized step in an otherwise advanced procedure, why that outdated first step quietly undermines everything the technology has gained, and what it means for the millions of people who put off screening because of it.