A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the use of a wireless pill camera, like Given Imaging's PillCam, in its current generation, is not as effective as a traditional colonoscopy procedure.
PillCam is an alternative to endoscopy, which requires the insertion of a long tube into a patient, a procedure that often necessitates sedation. PillCam's camera takes some 60,000 photos as it makes its way down the esophagus, into the stomach and through the intestines over a span of about eight hours. The PillCam can help doctors diagnose small-intestine conditions, including Crohn's disease, celiac disease, tumors and ulcerative colitis in patients 10-years-old or older.
The PillCam has a special coating that makes it slippery when wet and a bit easier to swallow. Once ingested, a monitoring device around the patient's waist uses a low-powered radio frequency to receive the images from the capsule as it transmits.
For the colonoscopy study, however, researchers found that the capsule screening had a sensitivity rate of 64 percent and a specificity rate of 84 percent in detecting polyps that were at least 6 millimeters in size, while rates for detecting advanced polyps were 73 percent and 79 percent, respectively.
Dr. Andre Van Gossum, from Erasme University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium, and colleagues conducted the two procedures in a multicenter study of 328 patients who either had colon lesions or had suspected ones. The researchers first they performed capsule endoscopy with the PillCam COLON capsule manufactured by Given Imaging. Once the patient had passed the PillCam, researchers performed a standard colonsoscopy. The PillCam failed to detect malignancies in five of the 19 patients that colonoscopy identified.
"This study shows that capsule endoscopy is a safe method of visualizing the colonic mucosa through colon fluids without the need for sedation or insufflation," the researchers said. "However, the sensitivity of capsule endoscopy for detecting colonic polyps, advanced adenomas, and colorectal cancer was relatively low in comparison with colonoscopy." They concluded that "the use of the colon capsule cannot be recommended at this stage for colon screening."
Given Imaging said it was already developing a more sensitive, second generation of PillCam.
For more on the study, read this article from Health News
Related: PillCam now used at Rady Children's Hospital
