Several million screening, diagnostic and therapeutic colonoscopies are performed each year in the U.S. hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers. The application of force to the colon and its anatomic attachments can be painful and excessive force can lead to perforation. There is significant variation in the forces applied and the reduction in this variation in technique and the characterization of effective, less forceful insertion methods will lead to more uniform training, improved continuing education and safer colonoscopy with less anesthesia. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a Colonoscopy Force Monitor (CFM), a handheld force measuring attachment mounted on the colonoscope tube. This device is designed to be easy to use, inexpensive to manufacture and result in less painful and safer colonoscopies. The objectives of Phase of this project are to built and test the CFM prototype, to demonstrate that CFM has the potential to improve the quality of colonoscopy by training unskilled operators, to correctly and safely conduct colonoscopy and to improve the skill level of experienced colonoscopists. We will demonstrate feasibility with a prototype CFM on an existing colon phantom model. Significant commercial opportunity exists to provide an effective, low-cost method to define best practices in colonoscopy and to implement these practices as part of training, ongoing education and quality assurance.
Thesaurus Terms: biomedical equipment development, biomedical equipment safety, biophysics, clinical biomedical equipment, endoscopy, gastrointestinal imaging /visualization, monitoring device injury prevention, medical complication, portable biomedical equipment bioengineering /biomedical engineering, bioimaging /biomedical imaging, phantom model
