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medpundit |
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Sunday, April 21, 2002In this case, it was used to get a good look into a patient's small intestine, where it is very difficult to reach with other methods. We don't have an endoscope that's capable of snaking it's way through the long tangled web of the small intestine, and barium x-rays have a hard time imaging it, too, because the loops of small bowel overlap each other so much. I don't think that this will replace the scopes we use to examine the lower colon and the stomach and esophagus, however. With the scopes the doctor can visualize the entirety of the bowel wall, stomach wall, or esophageal wall. This isn't possible with the video pill. There are bound to be some areas of the bowel wall that are out of camera range as it passes through the body. An Afterthought: The video camera pill really bears more resemblance to the Shusaku Endo story "Incredible Voyage" (found in the collection of short stories, Stained Glass Elegies), in which doctors journey through a patient's bowels in a shrunken ship, than to the Fantastic Voyage, the Jane Fonda movie where they travel through the patient’s blood stream. posted by Sydney on 4/21/2002 10:26:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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