What is opaque material in large bowel?
Opaque material in the large bowel is either one of two things. Either you had some sort of contrasted radiologic study in which they use barium or other dense metallic substance which appears soid white on xray. In this study you swallow the material and it highlights the lumen (tube) of the bowels so the radiologist can see them better. It could have been a barium xray OR a gastroview CT scan (gastroview uses iodine as the contrast). The other possibility is that you swallowed something radioopaque such as mercury (highly unlikely unless you intentionally swallowed liquid mercury) or iron or lead or some other material. Could be a coin or metal that you swallowed either intentionally or unintentionally. Bottom line is if you had abdominal xrays before the back xray was done and they made you swallow something, that is what they are seeing.
