The gastrointestinal system is an essential system not only for the nutrition
of the human body but also for the absorption of medications that are used for the
treatment of the numerous ailments that humankind is prone to. The food and drugs
mentioned are the ones that are taken by the oral route and not the ones meant for
intravenous alimentation or parenteral therapy.
The gastrointestinal system must be robust to carry out these functions mentioned
briefly and treated simplistically.
The gastrointestinal system can be investigated by a variety of medical imaging
techniques; these depend on the patient's symptoms, duration, findings on physical
examination, presence or absence of comorbidity, first episode or recurrence of the
symptoms and signs, whether the patient has undergone abdominal surgery (or not) in
the past, and other determinants. Therefore, while one patient may require plain
radiography, another may need barium meal (depending on the practice area in the
world), and yet other patients with presentation referable to the gastrointestinal system
may need endoscopy, CT scan, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or a combination
of these.
Keywords: Barium meal, CT scan, Endoscopy, Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Plain radiography.
