This isn’t an easy or necessarily pleasant subject, but it is a very important and perhaps even personal one. With colorectal cancer being the third leading cause of death in the United States, and actually the second when not considering gender differences (source), and over 52,000 people succumbing to it 2010, it’s a condition that needs to be detected and diagnosed early. This is not news. The question is, why *doesn’t* it get detected early when it could save so many lives?

That answer is complicated, but one of the reasons is very easy: The procedure of screening for it is, shall we say, unpleasant. The patient has to be put under general anesthetic, and a long camera snaked through their intestine to take pictures and check for lesions or polyps, both of which could indicate a potential problem.

Nothing about that sounds fun.

But it needs to be done when someone starts getting in to middle age, even earlier if there’s a family history. It’s understandable people don’t want to go through that process even if they are asleep through it; if only there was a way to make it less…snakey.

Sadly, there’s not. However there may be hope on the horizon. A new camera-pill that can be swallowed and will take pictures as it works its way through the digestive tract has been given FDA approval, and has been given he not-so-great name of PillCam Colon. In the event of a test being inconclusive, incomplete, or not possible because of other complications, the pill cam can be swallowed and pictures taken that way.

Watch it work!
It’s pretty remarkable – it can take multiple images per second and contains LED lights that provide illumination because it’s dark in there, and relays the images taken to a receiver on the patient’s body. Also, these have been around in some form for at least 15 years, but this is th first time for FDA approval.

This wouldn’t be a first line of defense, however, because the images are not of the same quality of a proper colonoscopy, it doesn’t allow for real-time evaluation and interpretation, and it only takes pictures, no samples for biopsy. Still, we all know how fast camera-phones improve, so I suspect this might be a picture (get it?) of the future of this procedure. If it reduces the death rate, increases the early-diagnosis rate, and saves lives, then I hope to see its continued development and advancement.