E. S. Hamilton
VFW Post 9876

Pattaya City, Thailand
 

 
Surgeon's Corner

Fiction as Science – The Camera You Swallow!
  

  
  Science fiction has a way of becoming science. Many of you will remember the 1960s movie, Fantastic Voyage, where they shrank down Raquel Welch's ample assets and injected her in a "space capsule" into a human body. Well, just 40 years later, fiction is reality. Gastro-enterologists (the docs who treat disorders of the digestive tract) have developed a new way to look inside your gut. The old 'new' way was to pass a tube down your throat or up your anus to look around inside. This was a great improvement over x-rays and swallowing barium to look at shadows in your gut, but it was uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing for the patient.

Now through the use of wireless technology and miniaturization, it can be done without pain or embarrassment. The capsule is not unlike Raquel's "space ship." It is roughly the size of a marble. It has a camera and a strobe light that flashes about every 2 seconds capturing a picture each time. The capsule is simply swallowed and it passes through the entire length of the digestive tract. This takes roughly 6-8 hours to accomplish. The wireless technology means that the patient is not confined to bed or a tunnel-like machine as with an MRI. The receiving unit is worn like a vest, giving the patient full freedom of movement and need not even stay in the hospital.

One draw-back is that the camera cannot be directed to an exact spot nor can it take a sample like the doctor can do via an endoscope. But for a scan of the entire digestive tract, nothing could be simpler. If the photos identify a particular area of concern, then an endoscope can be used to go directly to that spot for a more thorough look and sampling. On the other hand, this technology is perfectly suited to examine the middle third of the intestines that are out of reach from above or below.

This technology was pioneered early in the century. A recent addition allows the capsule to report its position within the body in a manner not unlike GPS devices.

One other interesting aspect is that the capsules are disposable. The one that passes through you has not gone through anyone else before!