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BY JERRY DAVICH
Times Staff Writer | Tuesday, July 29, 2003 | (No comments posted.)
Think of it as a medically minded food particle traveling through the human body toting a $400 disposable camera. Or the Dr. Paparazzi of the small intestines.
That's how experts portray this video-imaging "camera-in-a-capsule" technology -- new to Northwest Indiana -- allowing doctors to take a fantastic voyage into their patients' digestive tracts to pinpoint hidden diseases and causes for pain.
By swallowing a high-tech capsule the size of a horse pill, the wireless endoscopy procedure produces high-quality color images -- about 50,000 of them -- over an eight-hour period within the patients' small intestine, infamous for its hard-to-reach depths.
As the capsule winds its way through the body, it beams back everything in its path.
"It went down like any other pill," said Patrina Pierotti of Crown Point, who's been suffering through mysterious intestinal bleeding the past year.
Pierotti is the first patient to swallow the new procedure at St. Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point, currently the only area hospital offering the technology. Nurses offered Pierotti three glasses of water to wash down the pill Monday morning, but she only needed half a glass.
Before swallowing the blinking capsule, Pierotti was equipped with a special belt around her waist to receive signals transmitted by the pill. The belt, which allows patients to continue their daily activities, was removed from Pierotti on Monday afternoon.
"There was no pain, no aches, nothing," she said.
Unlike conventional endoscopic procedures, the capsule makes it completely through the 21-foot small bowel before being excreted naturally within eight to 72 hours.
The system is equipped with specialized software that processes the data and produces a short video clip, allowing doctors to edit and archive the video clips the next day.
"It takes an hour to an hour-and-a-half to do this," said Dr. Kumar Venkat, a St. Anthony gastroenterologist. "We look for any abnormalities, particularly abnormal blood vessels, that may show up."
The procedure, based on missile guidance technology, is developed by Given Imaging Ltd., an Israel-based firm, after being approved by the U.S. government in August 2001. It took several years to perfect.
"We used to send patients to Chicago for this procedure, but not anymore," Venkat said.
Chicago area hospitals have been offering the technology since late 2001. Northwestern Memorial Hospital was the first hospital in Illinois to do so.
Dr. Alan Buchman, head of Northwestern's Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, predicts the procedure will not replace standard examinations of the gastrointestinal tract, where a small fiber-optic tube fitted with a small camera is inserted into the intestine.
Nor will the technology ever be made tiny enough to be injected into the bloodstream to explore other areas of the body, Venkat said. But Buchman believes further refinement may allow doctors to treat abnormalities of the GI tract without having to operate or invade the body in other traditional ways.
Pierotti is simply happy that it finally found its way to this region.
"All the other tests have found nothing wrong," she said. "But there is."
Jerry Davich can be reached at jdavich@nwitimes.com or (219) 933-3376.
How Does It Work?
After the capsule is swallowed, it travels throughout the digestive system allowing the wireless endoscopy procedure to produce high-quality images that let doctors to see the full length of the 21-foot small intestine. Before swallowing the capsule, a patient wears a belt around the waist, which receives signals from the camera. Eight hours later, the patient returns the belt to the doctor's office.
The next day, a doctor reviews the images' results.
Who can it help?
Approximately 70 million Americans suffer from gastrointestinal troubles, including disorders of the small bowel such as cancer, Crohn's disease, gastrointestinal bleeding, inflammatory bowel disease and Celiac disease.
To learn more
For more information about the capsule, contact St. Anthony Medical Center at (219) 757-6353 or (219) 757-6040, or visit www.givenimaging.com.
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