A crawling camera!!!

Yet another milestone in the field of medicine...

Spider-man is one of the most famous comics stars who was recognized by the people to larger extent, but when a spider crawl inside your stomach, will they? No, its neither a surprise nor a science fiction, rather it is a latest technology in the medical field. Of course! It’s a capsule with camera, to be swallowed by the patient, which would be controlled by the doctor who then activates the device with tiny legs and makes it crawl like spider around the patient’s stomach or intestine to detect the signs of disease.

Spider pill creates flexibility among doctors to know the cause rather than inserting a long tube similar to snake through the mouth or colon. The most significant feature of this pill is that after examination; it would be excreted from the patient’s body naturally (That's great. Isn't it?).

 “It’s simple for the patient to swallow the pills rather than withstanding the pain while inserting the long tube through the mouth or rectum,” says Dr. S. R. Subramanian, Chief Vascular Surgeon, Sooriya Hospitals, Chennai. “The disadvantage is that when a person swallows these pills it would take some time to reach the small intestine, which is not the case when comes to traditional endoscopy,” he adds. These pills are very much useful for visualising and detecting the small intestine problems because it is too long and very much convoluted. But researchers have shown some evidence that capsule endoscopy could detect some rare disease which is not possible in traditional endoscopy.

We can appreciate the camera technology, which could even withstand in liquid environment i.e. stomach. This is not the first time these ‘Spider-pills’ were introduced, but followed without proper excretory measures. This is considered to be the first such device which exit the patient’s body naturally and that is proved by testing in a pig.

It is a very good alternative for endoscopy for which patients panic, even though it is extremely effective in diagnosing disease. Besides being just a camera, it could give all the possible information for diagnosis and further research is going on developmental side.