Moreover, frozen fecal matter can make the operation easier on the patient. The use of fresh material requires patients to undergo a colonoscopy, whereas the frozen material can be delivered to a patient’s digestive system via a tube that enters through the nose and reaches down to the stomach.

“For almost all patients in the study, this delivery was preferable to that by colonoscopy, which involves a preparatory ‘cleaning out’ of the colon, sedation or anesthesia, and is more costly,” said study researcher Dr. Elizabeth Hohmann, of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.