Risks

• Upper GI endoscopy (EGD): Although rare, bleeding and puncture of your esophagus or stomach walls are possible during EGD. Other complications include the following:
  
  
  • Severe irregular heartbeat
    
    
  • Pulmonary aspiration - When material, either particulate (food, foreign body) or fluid (gastric contents, blood, or saliva), enters from your throat into your windpipe
    
    
  • Infections and fever that come and go
    
    
  • Respiratory depression, a decrease in the rate or depth of breathing, in people with severe lung diseases or liver cirrhosis
    
    
  • Reaction of the vagus nerve system to the sedatives
    
• Lower GI endoscopy (colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, enteroscopy): Although uncommon (less than 1.5% of cases), possible complications of colonoscopy and sigmoidoscopy include the following:
  
  
  • Local pain
    
    
  • Dehydration (due to excess of laxatives and enemas for bowel preparation)
    
    
  • Cardiac arrhythmias
    
    
  • Bleeding and infection
    
    
  • Hole in your colon
    
    
  • Explosion of combustible gases in your colon (certain gases are produced within the bowel) during removal of polyps
    
    
  • Respiratory depression usually due to oversedation in people with chronic lung disease