Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jul 7, 2017; 23(25): 4517-4528
Published online Jul 7, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i25.4517
Enhanced electrogastrography: A realistic way to salvage a promise that was never kept?
Michael D Poscente, Martin P Mintchev
Michael D Poscente, Martin P Mintchev, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N1N4, Canada
Author contributions: Poscente MD participated in the entire research and development process, assisted with the surgical experiments, and wrote the initial version of the manuscript; Mintchev MP proposed the original idea, supervised the entire research and development process, designed the surgical experiments and performed the surgeries, structured the manuscript and edited it.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: The experimental work was approved by the Veterinary Sciences Animal Care Committee, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N1N4, Protocol No. SHC11R-03.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The data have been collected, processed, stored and utilized solely by the authors.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Martin P Mintchev, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, NW; Calgary, Alberta T2N1N4, Canada. mintchev@ucalgary.ca
Telephone: +1-403-2205309 Fax: +1-403-2826855
Received: January 6, 2017
Peer-review started: January 9, 2017
First decision: April 14, 2017
Revised: April 29, 2017
Accepted: June 12, 2017
Article in press: June 12, 2017
Published online: July 7, 2017
Processing time: 181 Days and 22.1 Hours
Abstract
AIM

To enhance the clinical utility of electrogastrography (EGG), which has been recorded since 1922, but is clinically unutilized.

METHODS

An innovative method to salvage the promise of EGG is proposed by introducing a preliminary procedure, while maintaining the electrodes, standardized equipment, and signal processing utilized in the well-established EGG testing of today. The proposed enhanced EGG (EEGG) protocol involves swallowing an ingestible capsule containing miniature electronic oscillator embedded in an expandable, self-disintegratable, biocompatible pseudobesoar residing in the stomach for the duration of the test. The benefits of the proposed approach are outlined, tested and discussed in details.

RESULTS

Experiments were performed on eight mongrel dogs (6F, 4M, 23.8 ± 3.3 kg). Four were administered an active EEGG capsule, while the rest were given a deactivated (battery removed) capsule. Pharmacologically facilitated gastric motility revealed a significant (P < 0.01) Pearson correlation between gastric motility indices obtained by force transducers implanted directly on the stomach, and the motility indices obtained by EEGG. A particular emphasis was made on preserving standard EGG-related hardware and software in order to facilitate the introduction of the proposed EEGG in environments which already utilize standard EGG testing. The expanded intragastric pseudobezoar containing the miniature electronic oscillator was retained during the tests, and could be disintegrated on demand.

CONCLUSION

Enhancing standard EGG by an ingestible, self-expanding and self-disintegrating pseudobesoar containing a miniature electronic oscillator can be an important avenue for clinical applicability of this test.

Keywords: Electrogastrography; Functional dyspepsia; Gastroparesis; Ingestible oscillator; Pseudobesoar

Core tip: Intrinsic gastric electrical activity is of specific nature that restricts the clinical applicability of its non-invasive measurements known as electrogastrography (EGG). This study proposes the utilization of an ingestible, self-expanding and self-disintegrating pseudobesoar containing a miniature electrical oscillator to enhance the clinical utility of EGG in diagnosing functional dyspepsia and gastroparesis.