First of all, I would like to emphasize that routine gastroscopy and colonoscopy are really minimally invasive with a very low risk even for elderly with pre-existing medical conditions provided those conditions are stable. Besides being able to inspect the inner lining of the digestive tract directly, endoscopy allows your specialist to obtain tissue samples and remove small polyps at the same time. This not only increases the accuracy of the diagnosis but also allows treatment to be done at the same setting with minimal risk to you.

The risks of any test depends largely on how the test is being done. Fortunately, most diagnostic tests in modern medicine do not carry a very high risk of injury to our body. As to whether the given risks to undergo a particular test is too high to accept will depend on a few factors. The most important factor is the reason to carry out the test and whether the result of such test is crucial. An example of a crucial test is getting tissue samples from an organ to confirm a cancer. The next factor to consider is whether there is a reasonable treatment with a given test result.