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New "Endoscope On a Pill"
ScienceDaily is reporting that a new form of endoscope developed at the University of Washington is more like swallowing a pill than the typical "massive" cable. The pill, complete with a 1.4 mm wide tether, contains a single optical fiber for illumination and six fibers for collecting light. "Once swallowed, an electric current flowing through the UW endoscope causes the fiber to bounce back and forth so that its lone electronic eye sees the whole scene, one pixel at a time. At the same time the fiber spins and its tip projects red, green and blue laser light. The image processing then combines all this information to create a two-dimensional color picture."
It's like a party in your stomach!
Is there a model in the works for the other end?
I just have to say this is just neat!
I'd probably freak out a bit if I felt this "bouncing back and forth" inside my throat or stomach. I prefer to swallow inanimate objects, thank you; I may be a geek, but I don't go for goldfish swallowing.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
is more like swallowing a pill than the typical "massive" cable.
Goatse guy went through all that for nothing.
If they shape this pill like the Magic School Bus I'm down for a colonoscopy anytime
I distinctly remember seeing a story about something like this on the Canadian TV show Daily Planet over a year ago. Our host, Jay Ingram, demonstrated it by actually swallowing the pill, and they showed the video on national TV.
I'd post the link, but this doesn't exactly sound like new stuff and I'm at work so I can't do the research. This was back when he was still co-hosting with Natasha Stilwell, which places it between 2004-2006. She's been replaced in the 2006-2007 season.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Right now, an endoscope requires a general anesthesia, which requires the patient to be monitored for adverse reactions, as well as accompaniment since the patient won't be able/allowed to drive home afterward.
My mom just had one done a few days ago, and she lives alone. The clinic performing it usually has a shuttle to pick up and drop off patients, but it wasn't available that day. She offered to take a cab, but they wouldn't allow it, stating that whoever is picking her up and dropping her off would have to stay there. Luckily, a neighbor was willing to help. (I live a few states away, for those wondering why I wasn't helping her.)
If he wasn't able to help her, she'd have had to reschedule, which would have meant rearranging her work schedule and possibly losing pay if she can't arrange the time off on short notice. If she could have driven herself there and back, she could have scheduled it around work, instead of the other way around.
I wonder how many people aren't able to have procedures like this done because they don't have the time/resources.
I'm not sure how well this will work since you can't take samples of tissue with this device - you need that to confirm your diagnosis of Barrett's and to see if there are any signs of early cancer/dysplasia.
I'm sorry sir, it appears you have swallowed a map.
Putting moderation advice in your
I'll stick with blunts.
I had a really bad hemorriod. I mean it was BAD. My then-wife finally talked me into taking it to the doctor. He scheduled a visit to a local hospital for an endoscopy, as he worried that the anal bleeding was from cancer.
Well, to make a short story even shorter, the lady doctor he sent me to shoved a big (compared to today) TV camera up my ass. I didn't like it a bit; I'd never had anything up there but shit before. She told me I had the most beautiful colin she'd seen (flattery will get you nowhere in that situation, lady).
So I went to see a proctologist. The office was dingy, and suggested dirtiness. The heavily accented doctor didn't inspire confidence, telling me I had the worst hemmoroid he'd ever seen. Not exactly what you want to hear from a doctor. "Has anyone ever died from a hemmoroid?" I asked. "No, not that I'm aware of" he said. "Has anyone ever died from hemmoroid surgery?" I asked. "Well," he answered, "there are always risks to any surgery".
I suffered with my hemmoroid for another fifteen years after that, and finally let a different doctor (a very pretty lady too) cut me a new asshole about five years ago. I think I journaled it in the old Paxil Diaries, I'm not sure. While I was unconscience they did another endoscope, most likely with a much smaller camera.
I was supposed to go back for another endoscopy last year. Guess what? I'd rather have colin cancer than have that damned TV camera shoved up my ass again!
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I am sure it's made of nontoxic materials. So if it breaks, it won't get digested and you'll see it back in a few days. So why all the fear?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
In that you only need a trained clinician (say even a nurse) with training in the procedure, and could use this in any office, thus allowing screening in small towns as part of a visiting nurse program for screening, which would even further reduce the cost from the current device limitations that require anesthesia to use (which always has a risk).
Besides, say it got lost, the small filament size (1.4 mm) would allow it to exit through the digestive tract and be recollected.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The last time I had to do this the doctor gave me a general anesthetic so I wasn't all the way out, but I wasn't able to get up either. He shoves this thing down my throat and keeps moving it, and every time he'd move it I was gagging on it. He keeps saying "just relax" yeah right, let me shove this thing down your throat and see you relax. Putz. Not only that my throat was sore for a week afterwords. I like the idea of this pill much better. Now if only my HMO would use it within the next 20 years. Yeah I know I'm dreamin'. Don't wake me.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
So it's like a disco up your ass? If you're getting an endoscopy, a party up your butt is likely the last thing you want to see.
Do you know how many years I've been waiting for *this* story to submit *that* punchline!? Damn you!! Damn you to hell!!
If you develop the esophagus cancer there was an 85% death probability.
BUT
"Only a small percentage of people who get Barrett's esophagus, about 5 percent to 10 percent, develop cancer. ** So any screening method must have a low price to be cost-effective.**"
Don't you love the "economics" of medicine?
Typically, an EGD is done with a sedative to supress the gag reflex. I'm guessing that will still be required in this case. It would be nice if one didn't have to be released to the custody of an adult after a simple 5 minute procedure of looking around in there.
+1 Informative about Canadian TV
They already have this for going down from above.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Great they just did what I am doing with my research but better, time to apply for a new project!
'Cause it's gotta be a real bitch when they have to pull that cable back through!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I have the points, but can't find '-1 TMI'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Neither end is particularly fun. Anything they can do to make the process less nasty is a step in the right direction. For those of us that have no choice in the matter and have to get checked every couple of years because of high risk of colon cancer or other things, this could be a godsend.
Of course, the worst part isn't the procedure itself, given that you're on so much valium that you don't remember much. It's the intestinal "clearing-out" you have to do the day before that sucks. Or blows, depending on how you look at it.
-r-
Right now, an endoscope requires a general anesthesia, which requires the patient to be monitored for adverse reactions, as well as accompaniment since the patient won't be able/allowed to drive home afterward.
No, it doesn't, I had one done last year without the general, only anesthetic I used was a tongue numbing mouth wash. It really wasn't that unpleasant. The doctor didn't want to do it, but I told him that I wasn't willing to undergo superfluous anesthesia just for something as trivial as an endoscopy. I bolstered my position by coming alone without anybody to drive me home.The charges that it's painful or uncomfortable are really over blown. The only people who should take the knock out drugs are those with a strong gag reflex or obscure medical conditions that require it. Most people are fine without it. Doctors will frequently have these done on themselves without any GA.
I had the tube running through my mouth, throat, and stomach all the way to the duodenum, and including a short stop over in the stomach to vacuum up some of the slime from my stomach for testing. The vacuuming was a bit on the uncomfortable side, but it really wasn't that bad.
My mom just had one done a few days ago, and she lives alone. The clinic performing it usually has a shuttle to pick up and drop off patients, but it wasn't available that day. She offered to take a cab, but they wouldn't allow it, stating that whoever is picking her up and dropping her off would have to stay there. Luckily, a neighbor was willing to help. (I live a few states away, for those wondering why I wasn't helping her.)
If he wasn't able to help her, she'd have had to reschedule, which would have meant rearranging her work schedule and possibly losing pay if she can't arrange the time off on short notice. If she could have driven herself there and back, she could have scheduled it around work, instead of the other way around.
I wonder how many people aren't able to have procedures like this done because they don't have the time/resources.
She should have been informed that GA is not compulsory for the procedure, it's mostly because people find swallowing a tube to be unpleasant. It really varies from person to person as to how useful it is. But it is hardly something which should be considered mandatory.Especially for those of us that are wary of anesthesia on safety grounds.
example. www.askasge.org/
But capsule endocsopies already exist.
It's painless, except for the fact that you have to walk around all day with a ginormous fanny pack strapped to your waist and numerous probes glued to your chest. Well, maybe the preparation is the worst part because you have to prepare for it just like a colonoscopy (i.e. drink a gallon...or a half gallon plus some pills if you get the good stuff... of nasty liquid the night before).
The weirdest part of the whole procedure is that they start taking pictures before you swallow it (of course) so when the doctor gets the fanny pack back, he first sees you, then he sees you swallow the pill, then he sees your insides.....all of them.
I've had 4+ Hemorrhoid operations myself.
I had 3 were they just slit the thing when it sticks out and goes hard, purple and painful.
They used Local anesthetic for the operation with me awake and gave me pain killers (Tylenol 3) for 3-4 days.
Going to the bathroom for a #2 was not fast or pleasant for the 20 years I had them until I got them banded.
Now I feel like I got a new one and I make sure I get my fiber!!
FYI: When nothing sticks out they call them polyps.(they can get banded too!)
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Seeing that this is misspelled twice (so far) in this thread - the word is "conscious" (state of being awake) or "unconscious" (passed out). I am not going to ask what "colin" was doing where he could be seen on an endoscope ...
I only had the one, they put me out for it. "You're going to go to sleep now" and the next thing I knew I was in postop. They prescribed some sort of drug for postop, but I didn't have a car then and had to have my daughter take a cab to the hospital to get me, and she wouldn't walk the 3 blocks to Walgreens to get the prescription filled.
I had trouble sitting ofr a day or two, but I'm damned glad now I had it done.
The cataract surgery (click the sig for details) in contrast had no pain whatever, save when they dosed me with eyedrops in preop. They had m ein "twilight sleep" for that, there was no pain but I distinctly remember freaking out when they stuck the needle in my eye. It too was worth it.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
...a Beowulf cluster of these?
And I was just starting lunch. Dammit.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
my experience, I had this rhoid about the size of a damn quarter, I was drinking a lot and it was coagulated (the blood had solidified) I had the option of surgery or waiting it out, luckily my Dr.'s brother had had the same issue and experimented with an herbal remedy called bioflavonoids, it worked, taking the herb for about two weeks along with hot baths cleared me up. No problems since. I highly recommend them. http://www.google.com/search?&q=bioflavonoids+hemorrhoids/
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Not exactly the same, but in some ways more impressive: the company my now-ex-gf was working for, designed and built an ultrasonic imaging device that they could feed into your femoral artery and snake up into your beating heart to image the insides real-time. No cracking the chest open, no shutting the heart down and rerouting the blood through an external pump.
It gets better. They could click the ultrasound transducer into high power mode and selectively kill small sections of the heart that were beating incorrectly -- were hindering, rather than helping, the contraction of the heart, which apparently happens when scar tissue from a previous heart attack reduces or blocks the nerve signal propagation across the heart muscle -- so they could do actual surgery to correct heart malfunctions, with nothing more than a tiny cut on your leg.
Her job was plating quartz substrate with layers of copper and gold, then cutting it into tiny sections that acted as the piezo elements for the transducer. She then hand-soldered wires onto each of the hundred-some elements, using wire about the diameter of a human hair, because the whole transducer was like 2mm in diameter and only a couple times that long. It was amazing. (So was the plating process, which involved solid chunks of copper and gold that weighed a kilo or more, each one. They were pretty careful about the gold ones, but let me have several of the used copper ones, so I have table coasters way cooler than either the infamous AOL cd's or hard drive discs: massive machined chunks of copper with one side plasma-etched away.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
As some folks may know who've endured the procedure, endoscopy usually involves a relatively large tube that has more than the two functions of the tethered "pill" listed here. The tethered "pill" can 1) illuminate and 2) visualize, but it does not allow for 3) irrigation, 4) suction or 5) collection of biopsies (more info here). These are critical functions that most larger-bore endoscopes can currently perform without the requirement of adding a second endoscope that can provide these functions.
As a medical student shadowing a gastroenterologist, I know how critical (3)-(5) are in even "normal" endoscopies, let alone those with possible pathology. However, for screening or exploratory endoscopy on low-risk patients, this seems like an excellent tool.
C'mon everybody! This guy's going on and on about his lack of a gag reflex and that he finds "swallowing a tube" pleasant and we get no dirty jokes?! What's wrong with you people?
Screw it -- there's still a tether. I'd be gagging and puking like nobody's business. Now, when they make it work with bluetooth...
Life would be easier if I had the source code.
This technology has been around at least since I've been in medical school, so probably > 8 years. Capsule endoscopy is quite well developed, and I really wish that the Science Daily people would do a bit more research to put "new" events in perspective.
The one in the article sounds as though there is a tether and can be manipulated back and forth. I don't have any experience with this one. The systems I saw were like this or this and were passively mobilized by small intestine movement, just as your body would move food. The person undergoing the study would wear a vest with an embedded antenna, which would receive the images and store it on a hard drive attached.
After images were obtained, we could review the film either on still frames or "animation". It looked like driving through the intestine -- kind of like a very bizarre EPCOT center ride.
A couple notes that are very important:
- As with all medical technology, it must be validated before being trusted too much. Direct visualization endoscopy is the "gold standard," and this is being tested against that. Even still, don't get too excited, as most diagnosis is followed by a treatment, so if anything suspicious is found you'll probably need the real endoscopy for a better look / resection of polyps, etc.
- With the system at my hospital, the patient would get a $100 rebate if they... um... returned the device. Believe it or not, a lot of people did not. (maybe I'm just too desensitized, or not wealthy enough, but that seems like easy money.)
We had a very interesting case where one guy's images *all of a sudden* switched to a different part of the colon, and then went back again. It was really weird -- until we found another patient that had the *same thing*, with similar images.
It turned out that the two patients were talking about their common procedure in the parking lot after they left our office. They stood close enough together that the pill wireless cameras started recording each other's images. They now have a unique identifier in most systems.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
You mean like this?
They ran one of these down my main sewer line a few weeks ago to look at the tree roots that have gotten in...found out that the pipe hasn't collapsed, at least, so they routed it out and I can put off replacing it for a little while. Handy gadget.
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
There is an esophageal pill cam which takes images much faster and images the esophagus in the 5-120 seconds the camera is in transit. Check out Given Imaging's site.
About 1.5 years ago I agreed to be a test subject for this procedure. I was going to have endoscopy the old fashioned way and they wanted to compare results. I wore a wide belt that contained the receiver and other hardware. The pill was clear with a camera in both ends so they could see coming and going. It was a large pill but easy enough to swallow with a little water. After ingesting the pill they had me slowly sit up. The whole deal took about 20 min. No discomfort at all. No drugs needed! Then came the real deal. The standard endoscopy left me groggy and a slightly sore throat. They did, however, let me take home some pictures of my esophogial vereces and other quite colorful goings on in my innards. The pill cam was the preferable experience.
We gave you one of those expanding foam animal gel-caps instead...oops.
I've had an endoscopy in the last 2 months. Anything smaller than the existing, close to 1cm cables (or so it felt) would have been a vast improvement.
"Hentai Tentacle Porn Oral Rape" would be a suitable description of the experience. I recommend them to all my enemies.
Might be hard to grab samples with a pill though.
I took one of the pill cam's about a year ago. It didn't work on me. My GI tract is too fast for the camera to record enough images to make a decent diagnosis. At least that's what the physician reading the images said.
Esophageal varicies....so how many 40's are you downin per day?
I've had several endoscopies and never under general anesthesia. Normally it's a local anesthetic sprayed onto the back of my throat with an IV benzo, and sometimes Fentanyl as well. They have a look around and often take biopsies. I'm sure there are cases where general anesthesia is needed in endoscopies (medically, or because the patient doesn't tolerate the procedure), but I don't think it's "standard" from what I've gathered (in NZ, at least). Although, I'm still not allowed to drive home.
You're talking about that wireless pill camera? That is different to what this article is talking about -- this one still has a cable, just a really thin one.
I can assure you that endoscopes DO NOT require general anesthesia. Typically the GI doctor will give you some benzodiazapenes and narcotics to put you in "la la land" so to speak but you are fully arousable albeit confused. This is how things are in the United States. In some other countries, they do not give you any medication and you have to take it like a man.
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