Abstract
Objective:
This study is a pilot study which takes into account many variables and aims to compare the effectiveness of behavioral and drug therapy for the treatment of encopresis and tries to find out an effective intervention for this psychopathology.
Method:
25 children between ages 5-14 who had encopresis and were in follow up in pediatric surgery and pediatric gastroenterology departments for the organic etiologies were also evaluated in the child psychiatry department with clinical diagnostic interviews and psychometric tests. Patients were randomly divided into two groups and one gruop took behavioral therapy while the other group used drug.
Results:
7 children had comorbid attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, 4 children had comorbid learning disorder and 2 children had comorbid mental retardation (IQ<70). “Affective Involvement" subtest of the Family Assessment Test showed abnormal results in these children. Significant difference was not found between two groups in respect to behavioral and medical treatments. Mean threshold volumes of all children measured with anorectal monometry were higher than values in the literature. The mean resting pressure values were found to be higher in patients with no response to treatment than patiens with treatment response.
Discussion:
It has been concluded that replicating this study with a larger population can be useful to find out the answers of many questions about encopresis because generalizing the results of this study which had been conducted in a small sample can be misleading. It must be considered that there are many external variables effecting the results of the studies conducted with children with encopresis and these variables decrease the reliability of the studies.
Keywords: Encopresis, psychometric evaluation, monometry, colonic transit time
