Gastroenterologists are often tasked with the difficult job of looking inside a patient's digestive tract to find problems and signs of disease. Unfortunately, doing so often requires the doctor to insert a long scope into the patient's throat or colon, both of which can be quite uncomfortable for the patient; uncomfortable enough that some refuse treatment and preventive screenings. Based in Israel, the Given Imaging company is changing this with the PillCam.
What It Is
About the size of a multivitamin, the PillCam is a disposable clear capsule. The capsule contains two cameras, an LED light, a transmitter and a battery. After the patient swallows the capsule, the light turns on and the cameras take pictures of the digestive tract as the pill passes through it. These pictures, taken in color at 14 frames per second, are transmitted to a receiver the patient wears on his or her waist. After the pill has passed through the intestinal tract, the doctor downloads the pictures and examines them.…show more content… In 2014, the FDA expanded their approval to include colonoscopies, but only in patients who are unable to have a traditional colonoscopy due to unusual anatomy, disease or other medical concerns. Though the images from the PillCam are not quite as clear as those from a colonoscopy, the Associated Press reports that the FDA's approval of the device for colonoscopy will allow 750,000 more patients a year to get the procedure.
