Almost everyone gets occasional heartburn, that painful sensation in the chest or throat caused by the reflux of stomach acid back into the esophagus. When it happens too frequently, however, such as in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease, it can result in a condition known as Barrett’s esophagus. An estimated 3 million Americans suffer from this disorder, where the tissue that lines the esophagus accumulates abnormal changes over time, increasing the risk for esophageal cancer.
Barrett’s esophagus often goes undiagnosed because it causes minor or nonexistent symptoms, and because of the procedure required to identify it. Currently, doctors must sedate a patient, insert a long, flexible camera known as an endoscope down the esophagus to look for abnormal tissue, and then cut off a small piece for analysis in a laboratory. The procedure is invasive, expensive and uncomfortable.
Now, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston have invented a tethered, pill-sized endoscope that that allows doctors to construct an image of a person’s esophagus in microscopic detail within a few minutes—and all without anesthesia, intense training or causing pain. Their work was published today in Nature Medicine.
“A lot of people have reflux but don’t feel the pain of heartburn,” says MGH pathologist Gary Tearney, who led the study. These patients are at high risk for developing cancer, because they usually have no reason to get their esophagus inspected. “[Our device] really opens up screening to many more people,” Tearney says.