CAPSULE ENDOSCOPY AS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL IN HORSES.

A new technique has been developed to ease diagnosis issues in horses,the procedure uses a camera pill to aid visualization of the gut. The research was carried out by veterinary researcher Dr. Julia Montgomery in the U of S Western College of Veterinary Medicine. Montgomery worked with equine surgeon Dr. Joe Bracamonte and Khan Wahid, a specialist in health informatics and imaging in the College of Engineering. The team used an endoscopy capsule about the size and shape of a vitamin pill with a camera to have a look inside a horse. The capsule pill endoscopy offers a powerful new tool to diagnose diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and cancer, or to check surgical sites. Researchers could use it to see how well drugs to stimulate bowel action are working, or to answer basic questions such as determining what normal small intestine function looks like. The advantage of this method of diagnosis is that the inside of the horse can be viewed and a better understanding gained as to the normal operations of the intestine,with little or no stress to the animal. The other forms of diagnosis prior to this are endoscopy,exploratory surgery, or laparascopy. The "camera pills" have been in use for human medicine for some time, but have just been used in equine health. The team used in the horse by administering the capsule through a stomach tube directly to the horse's stomach. The journey down the track was noted for the next eight hours, as the capsule and its camera made its way through the horse's small intestine, offering a continuous picture of what was going on. This will really ease diagnosis issues and speed up treatment in horses,thus ensuring equine health is maintained when eventually available.The team plans to run more tests in the next few months on different horses to gather more data so as to provide capsule pill specific to the horses. diagnosis# diagnostic kits# equine health # data #