Saturday 6 August 2022 11:55 PM GPs could soon offer quick scan to check for serious bowel conditions during ... trends now
GPs could soon offer patients a ten-minute scan to check for serious bowel conditions during a routine appointment.
The portable device can help doctors spot early problems such as ulcerative colitis – a painful disease that causes ulcers in the colon – and even cancers.
If something sinister is spotted, patients can be fast-tracked for treatment, or, if nothing serious is found, they can be immediately reassured.
It could mean that patients who visit their GP suffering bleeding, changes in bowel habits and abdominal discomfort avoid the long wait for a colonoscopy, which requires sedation and must be carried out in a hospital or specialist unit.
Currently this is the only way to either detect or rule out serious bowel disease.
The new device, called LumenEye, consists of a small disposable probe, about 8in in length, with a high-definition camera at the end.
It looks at just the lower part of the colon, whereas a colonoscopy uses a long flexible tube and camera to examine the entire large intestine.
The images from LumenEye are shown in real time on a screen. Both are housed in a small case, meaning it is easy to transport and store, and undergoing this scan is painless and requires no anaesthetic.
LOOKING UP: A probe with a camera can spot suspicious-looking tissue in the colon in real time
Colorectal surgeon James Kinross, who specialises in bowel cancer treatments at Imperial College London, said: ‘If a patient has worrying symptoms and a physical examination can’t determine an obvious cause, GPs tend to refer them for a colonoscopy. It means these services are dealing with everything from relatively benign problems like haemorrhoids to more serious things, and are completely overburdened.
‘This tech won’t replace colonoscopies, but it will help GPs work out exactly who needs to be sent for further testing and who doesn’t.’
The LumenEye, is already being used in more than a dozen NHS hospitals to keep a check on ulcerative colitis patients.
But now there is some evidence it could be used to aid diagnosis of other conditions. In a study carried out at Imperial College London, 130 patients suffering symptoms such as bleeding or changes in bowel habits, which could indicate cancer or another bowel disease, were given the test.
It was, found experts, an accurate way of spotting problems that required further investigation and weeding out those that
