Guides · Preparing
Give the day
to the day.
The preparation for a comprehensive screening is short, specific, and mostly about the night before. What catches people out is not the fast. It is assuming the afternoon is still theirs.
The preparation for a comprehensive screening is short, specific, and mostly about the night before. What catches people out is not the fast. It is assuming the afternoon is still theirs.
The one thing this page does not put a clock on is your own schedule, because it depends on which tests your program includes and what time your slot is. Your coordinator sends the exact times with the confirmation, and they are the ones to follow.
The fast. Every program on this site includes bloods and an ultrasound, and both want an empty stomach. Plan on roughly ten hours with nothing in it, and it is a real fast: no water, no coffee, no gum, no sweets, no cigarettes. The no-water part is what catches people out, because a checkup fast is stricter than the clear-liquids rule some other procedures allow. It is measured back from your slot rather than from midnight, so a late slot and an early slot are prepared for differently, and your coordinator sends the exact window with the confirmation. The one exception is essential daily medication — see below.
The bowel preparation, if your program includes a colonoscopy. This is the real one. It is a clear-liquid diet and a prescribed solution taken the day before, it takes the evening, and an incomplete preparation can hide small lesions, which means a badly-prepared colonoscopy is not a slightly worse test but a partly wasted one. Programs from the Comprehensive tier up include it.
If your program includes an endoscopy, it is performed under sedation, and at partner centres a gastroscopy and a colonoscopy are commonly done back to back in one sedation session rather than as two separate procedures with two recoveries. That is the good news and it is also the reason the day is gone: you will not be in a state to drive, to sign anything, or to trust your own judgement afterwards.
Book nothing else. The most common planning mistake we see is a dinner reservation on screening evening, made by someone who read "20 to 40 minutes" for the procedure and did the arithmetic on that.
Put the screening day in the first half of the trip and not on the first morning.
Early, because you get a same-day consultation on preliminary findings, and anything that consultation raises is far easier to act on while you are still in Korea with a physician who can arrange the next test. The full written report is a different matter and follows weeks later, after you have flown home.
Not the first morning, because a fast and a sedation both go better without a long-haul flight directly behind them, and because a delayed bag with your medication in it is a solvable problem on day three and a trip-shaping one on day one.
Each of these is straightforward with notice and disruptive without it, so say what you take when the appointment is being arranged rather than at the desk on the morning, and bring everything in its original packaging.
Blood thinners and antiplatelets — aspirin, warfarin, clopidogrel and the like. Taken too close to the day, a biopsy or a polyp removal cannot be done safely even if the doctor finds something that needs one. They are usually paused about a week beforehand, but only ever on the instruction of the doctor who prescribed them. Never stop a heart or stroke medication on your own.
Diabetes medication and insulin — held on the morning of the screening until the fasting tests are done, because the fast changes how they act. Your coordinator and the centre confirm the timing with the appointment.
Blood-pressure medication is the exception to the fast. Take it as usual with a small sip of water, because blood pressure that runs too high can stop an endoscopy going ahead. Do not skip it along with the food.
Any past reaction to sedation, a contrast dye, or an anaesthetic, however minor it seemed at the time.
If there is any chance you are pregnant, tell us before the day rather than on it. X-rays, CT and an endoscopy are restricted in pregnancy, and the program is planned around what is safe.
For a urinalysis or a cervical smear, the reading is cleaner five to seven days after a period than during one. If your slot falls at an awkward point in the cycle, say so and the coordinator sequences those tests accordingly.
A prostate or pelvic ultrasound reads best on a full bladder, so for those you may be asked to hold your first morning urine rather than empty it before the scan. The confirmation says if this applies to your program.
