York County Medicine Fall 2019 - 17

YO R K C O M E D S O C . O R G

How It Works
Preparation for it is a little bit of a bear, as one has to be on a
clear liquid diet for much of the day before and take laxatives that
result in a little bit of self-induced diarrhea to clean everything out.
On the day of the test, patients just need to come to the office
wearing loose-fitting, two-piece clothing so the recording tool can
be put around their waist comfortably. A technician will then attach
sensors to their chest and to a data recorder that they wear on a belt
around their waist.
The pill itself is less than an inch long, yet it contains a tiny
video camera, light source, and transmitter. As the capsule travels
through the body, the camera takes pictures and sends them to the
data recorder.
After the patient swallows the capsule, he or she can go home or
to work. There are a few restrictions. Generally, they can eat a light
snack after four hours. But a heavy meal shouldn't be eaten for eight
hours. They should also avoid intense physical activity as well as
stooping over or bending.
Mostly, though, patients just need to make sure the recording
tool stays near their belly during the test.
After eight to 12 hours, patients return to the office where the
data recorder is removed and the images downloaded to a computer.
There we can view color pictures taken by the capsule.

It is not a perfect test. Like anything, stuff can be missed. The
capsule cannot be controlled with some sort of joy stick to make
it do things, and does not respond to any commands. It just takes
pictures. All of those 57,000-some-odd pictures are viewed like a
movie - a very, very boring movie - typically several days after the
test is done.
However, it has made it possible to sort out some situations that
formerly required surgery to diagnose.
On the plus side, unlike the earliest generations of this test in the
late 1990s, the patient no longer has to fish around their commode
with a magnetic wand to try to recover the capsule - after it has
made its last leg of the journey through, well, you-know-where. It
is a single-use pill camera, once and done; it gets flushed away, and
that's it.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates
that gastrointestinal diseases affect between 60 and 70 million
Americans every year. This results in tens of millions of endoscopy
procedures.
In the long term, capsules or "smart pills" are expected to be
an important tool for remote patient monitoring and telemedicine.
And as the call for noninvasive procedures increases, tools like
capsule endoscopy will become more commonly known.

FALL 2019 | York County Medicine

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York County Medicine Fall 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of York County Medicine Fall 2019
