COVID-19 Update

Patient pathway: All patients attending the Endoscopy Unit at Homerton Hospital will require a telephone pre-screening appointment and a COVID-19 swab (both of which will be arranged by the unit),  In light of this, all Direct Access Endoscopy Services will no longer be ‘directly bookable’ with an appointment date, but will be changed to a

RAS (Referral Assessment System) on e-RS. This can still be found in the same place under ‘Diagnostic Endoscopy', but you will click ‘Send for Triage’, and this will only be visible to the hospital team once the referral forms are attached. The endoscopy booking staff will contact the patients on receipt of the referral to arrange the pre-screening and swab testing and to give them a date for the Endoscopy appointment afterwards.  Please continue to provide the information leaflets to the patient for DA OGD, reminding patients for an OGD to fast for 6hrs before the procedure.

Dysphagia: The new Edinburgh Dysphagia score (EDS) is to help guide which patients with dysphagia symptoms require an urgent OGD (at higher risk of malignancy) and which can be referred for routine OGD. The DA OGD referral form has been amended to include this.

For urgent and routine direct access upper GI endoscopy. 

Eligibility criteria

Inclusions

An algorithm has been developed to help GPs decide on when to refer as urgent (see Downloads). 

How to refer

The following clinicians can refer to this service: GPs