Digital Rectal Examination and Balloon Expulsion Test in the Study of Defecatory Disorders: Are They Suitable as Screening or Excluding Tests?

Table 1

Inclusion criteria and extracted data.

Studies	> 25; Patients with chronic constipation (no strict criteria); Patients with no specified subtype of chronic constipation; Performance of DRE or BET (in comparison to a defined physiological test); Sufficient data to calculate sensitivity, specificity, NPV
Data	Gender distribution; Mean age; DRE and BET characteristics; Criteria for positivity in DRE and BET; Comparative anorectal physiological test; Criteria for diagnosis of defecatory disorder in physiological test; Number of true positive, true negative, false positive, false negative

DRE: digital rectal examination. BET: balloon expulsion test.