In the past, diagnosing ulcers or other intestinal problems meant an
endoscopy procedure under anesthesia, or x-rays after ingesting a chalky
substance.
Instead, how would you like to find out by swallowing a camera the size of a pill?
This little pill, is about to take a journey through McKenzie Hrabik's body to find out what's wrong.
That
blinking light provides light for a miniature video camera inside the
pill. It is equipped with batteries, a radio transmitter, and antenna.
As soon as she swallows, the camera starts taking images of McKenzie's throat.
"this is creepy."
McKenzie
has crohns disease, an inflammatory problem in her intestine. And her
current treatment is not getting rid of all her symptoms.
"I've suffered with stomach pains, nausea, just like, a lot of weight loss."
other tests have failed to find out why. The pillcam will.
"The nice thing about the video capsule, is we're able to see
that segment of the small bowel, that I couldn't get to with my standard
colonoscopy or upper endoscopy."
The pillcam traveled through her stomach and into the small intestine, where most chemical digestion of food is done.
Over
the course of an 8 hour period, it transmitted about 100,000 images
which were downloaded to a computer where her doctors were able view the
images.
"it's not too bad, but obviously she still has active disease."
The pillcam told the doctor she needed to change the dosage.
"The medicine was doing 80% of what I wanted it to, and all I needed to do was to tweak her does up a little bit."
"So we can get you back to a state of not having stomach pains, and get your labs back under control."
"It's nice to know there wasn't anything major, but there is reasons why I am having pain in those areas."
"My hopes are a healthy happy life and just to be able to live normally."
The pill camera is disposable and passes through the body harmlessly.
