But they said the capsule, at least in its current form, is too limited to replace endoscopes, as the fiber-optic tubes are called. It could be several years before the camera wins approval. The developers plan the first human trials in the United States this year. It's fascinating,'' said Col. Peter McNally, who is at Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, Colo., and is medical spokesman for the American College of Gastroenterology. The digestive tract is a 30-foot network of organs that follows a coiled route through the body.
Endoscopes can view much of the system down through the throat and up through the colon.
Endoscopy has become a routine hospital procedure to diagnose and treat many digestive ailments, including colorectal cancer, the second-leading cancer killer in the United States with more than 56,000 deaths in 1999. However, remote portions of the small intestine are difficult to examine without very long and uncomfortable equipment or exploratory surgery. That inspired the capsule's development by Swain and Given Imaging, an Israeli company. The initial test results were published today in the journal Nature. One end of the capsule is fitted with a window for a light and a camera with a fixed, wide-angle lens.