Camera in capsule explores intestine
Relatively noninvasive technology illuminates the small intestine.
By EMILY VASQUEZ
Published August 14, 2005
HUDSON - Helen Cheney studied the vitamin-sized pill in her palm in her doctor's office at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point.
Unlike any prescription medicine she had seen before, the capsule glowed, flashing a white light from one end.
"It's so odd when you see that little light, that you're going to swallow it," she recalled.
Nevertheless, down it went.
And over the next eight hours that light allowed a tiny video camera inside the pill to image part of Cheney's gastrointestinal tract that doctors at Bayonet Point had long had difficulty exploring.
When Cheney returned to the hospital from her Port Richey home that afternoon, she and the doctors got a look at the footage.
"I could see all my insides," she said. "Everything was moving."
Cheney was the first patient at Bayonet Point to undergo the procedure, known as capsule endoscopy, made available at the hospital in mid July.
It's not an alternative to a traditional colonoscopy or upper GI endoscopy procedure, but it is a relatively noninvasive technology that's enabling doctors at the hospital to go where they haven't gone before when it comes to the 21-foot-long small intestine.
Since Cheney was 28, she has had anemia, and doctors are still searching, she said, for the source of the problem.
"They thought maybe this would find something," Cheney said. "Something in my body that wasn't working."
Because gastrointestinal bleeding might be the cause of the deficiency, said her doctor, Lakshminarasimhan Venu, an inspection of her entire intestine was necessary.
A miniature camera inside the pill passes through the intestine, transmitting images via an antenna to a beeper-sized data recorder worn around the waist on a belt.
The constant movement of the small intestine itself pushes the capsule along. Censors are attached to the patient's abdomen that help doctors track the capsule's location as they view the footage. And eventually the capsule painlessly passes out of the system with stool, Venu said.
It's a technology first developed in the early 1990s and approved for general use in 2001. Each pill costs about $450, Venu said, and most insurance companies will cover the procedure.
East Pasco Medical Center in Zephyrhills and Community Hospital in New Port Richey began offering the procedure in 2003. Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, also in New Port Richey, got it in 2004. Pasco Regional Medical Center doesn't offer it yet.
The procedure is particularly helpful for patients suffering from ailments including bleeding or tumors in the small intestine, Crohn's disease, and inflammatory bowel disease, Venu said.
Before capsule endoscopy, diagnostic procedures for such problems in the small intestine were limited and often didn't provide doctors with an adequately detailed image of most of the small intestine, Venu said. Colonoscopy and upper GI endoscopy procedures couldn't reach most of the area, Venu said.
For Cheney, Venu was able to rule out the small intestine as the source of her bleeding, Venu said.
Nevertheless, Cheney said she was impressed by the pill.
She said it seems the cause of her anemia is just a mystery. "I guess I'm an oddball," she said.