Slashdot Mirror
Pill Helps Doctors See Digestive Tract
Bush_man10 writes "RedNova is reporting about a pill loaded with technology similar to a digital camera that allows doctors to view more than 50,000 still images captured as it makes the trip through your small intestine. This is a much better alternative than the old fashioned camera on snaking tubes to check for intestinal troubles. All the images are collected wirelessly through a belt you wear while the pill completes it's fantastic voyage."
I would have the old preceedure. What if the camera missed something. With video and a doctor I think you would have a better chance. Though 50 thousand pics is alot. Im not a doctor but maybe 50,000 is enough to look for what ever there looking for. Still better safe than sorry.
My Grandfather had this done.
He had colon cancer. A rather massive, record-setting tumor (for our state) had lodged itself in his intestines. He took the pill, wore the belt, etc. It worked great, and the images from the camera weren't of espicially great quality, but they got the job done.
The downside to this was that the cancer was at the very end of his intestinal tract, and it took the physicians so long to go through all of the images, before they got to the ones they needed and determined that he needed immediate, emergency surgery. This was three weeks after he passed the camera.
Thankfully, they got to it in time, but still, just in time. It saved his life, in the end, I think, but it came a little too close for my (and his, I'm sure) comfort.
By the way, he's doing fine, now. Healthier than I've ever seen him before.
Informatus Technologicus
tapewyrm writes "I took the 50,000 images my doctor made of my intestinal tract (by hacking into the receiver belt - see the details here) and made them into a panarama view! I think it's the largest digital image made of anyone's digestive tract. I also made it into a 3d shooter, and am looking to sell the rights to my guts. Any takers?" This one $#$@ load of pixels, but is there really a market for such an intimate portrait? We've already got goatse...
-Adam
A different minimally invasive test that is likely to have a larger impact on colon cancer screening in developed countries is described in the latest New England Journal of Medicine
The technique is known as CT colonography and consists of aquiring several hundred CT slices of the abdomen/pelvis then using software to reconstruct the lumen of the colon and fly through it virtual-reality style looking for cancer. The linked study reports that CT colonography in experienced hands is as good as the "gold standard" of colonoscopy, a finding that (if validated in other studies) could mean that hundreds of thousands of people might be able to avoid the scope and get a less invasive CT scan to screen for cancer.
Yes, you probably already guessed that "M2A" *does* mean "Mouth-to-ass".
---
[Not that this capsule is new. One local health system had this device over a year ago.]
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.