Infant’s Age Influences the Accuracy of Rectal Suction Biopsies for Diagnosing of Hirschsprung’s Disease

Effectiveness of calretinin and role of age in the diagnosis of Hirschsprung disease

“…Bagdevicius et al reported that RSB outcome may be influenced by patient's age [23], and recently Meinds et al found a lower sensitivity (50 %) of RSB and a higher number of inconclusive results in infants younger than 39 days [6].…”

“…The rate of non-conclusive results varies from one to another report (11-37.8 %) [5][6][7][8][9]. The most frequent cause of non-conclusive results is an inadequate sample, being the most common ones the lack of submucosa and the presence of squamous epithelium in the specimen [13,17,20].…”

“…Rectal suction biopsy (RSB) stained for acetylcholinesterase (ACE) activity is the gold standard for the diagnosis, having a sensitivity of 88-95 % and specificity of 95-99 % [2][3][4]. RSB gives a significant number of non-conclusive results that can be as high as 38 % in some series [5][6][7][8][9]. There is no specific standard for pathological evaluation of RSB; however, hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) is the most widely used staining method.…”

Suction Rectal Biopsy is Accurate in Late Preterm Infants with Suspected Hirschsprung Disease

“…In these prior studies the sensitivity ranged from 46%-100% and the specificity was between 97% and 100%. [11][12][13] Our study differs from those previously published in that we focus exclusively on a preterm cohort of patients less than 37 gestational weeks at the time of biopsy. Taken together, the available data suggest that the accuracy of SRB in preterm infants is comparable to that of older children.…”

Current practice patterns of rectal suction biopsy in the diagnostic work-up of Hirschsprung’s disease: results from an international survey

“…More recently, another systematic review has revealed that RSB provides in almost 90 % adequate tissue samples for the diagnosis of HD, with mean sensitivity and specificity rates of approximately 97 and 99 %, respectively [12]. On the other hand, it has been reported that RSB identifies HD in patients \39 days of age with a sensitivity of only 50 %, thus frequently leading to inconclusive results with need for additional biopsies [31]. In addition, RSB has been found to provide often inconsistent results in older infants and children, probably because their submucosal tissue is more fibrous [18], raising concern of a decreased diagnostic yield.…”