Pill Cam Technology Helps Physicians Diagnose Digestive Disorders

The pill cam is a diagnostic tool used by gastroenterologists. It is a pill with a camera inside designed to take pictures of the intestinal track. The pill cam can identify areas of the small intestine that have a type of blood vessel malformation called arterial vascular malformations, or AVMs. AVMs are a leading cause of serious intestinal bleeding, especially in people taking blood thinners.

Carolyn Cegielski, D.O., a gastroenterologist with Jefferson Medical Associates, states, “There are eight different electrodes, much like an EKG machine, that are put on the body. The patient swallows the capsule with a sip of water and then leaves and does his or her daily routine activities for eight hours. At the end of the day, the patient comes back and we take the electrodes off and download the pictures from a beeperlike device onto the computer.”

This device helps physicians diagnose Crohn’s disease and other causes of chronic abdominal pain. “The camera takes approximately 55,000 pictures as it travels through the digestive tract,” Dr. Cegielski continues. “We can actually see a visual of the entire small intestine.”

The pill cam is useful in locating ulcers in the small intestines. “When there is bleeding in the digestive tract, we usually can diagnose where the bleeding is coming from by standard endoscopy. However, oftentimes we cannot find a source. This is when the pill cam is beneficial, because we can identify the source of the bleeding,” she concludes.

The pill cam is just one example of the Laurel medical community’s commitment to providing advanced technology to the residents of this service area. Carolyn Cegielski, D.O., Jesse H. Ezzell Jr., M.D., and Stephen P. Johnson, D.O., gastroenterologists at Jefferson Medical Associates, all use the pill cam technology.