Acid related disorders are numerous and often require chronic treatment and maintenance. Many of these diseases are without symptoms and therefore difficult to diagnose and treat. Gastric analysis is the quantitative measurement of gastric acid output and is a critical tool for the diagnosis of acid related disorders and the ongoing assessment of therapy response. At present gastric analysis requires a technically difficult procedure, using gastric aspiration through a nasogastric tube, that is costly, invasive, and uncomfortable for patients. Recently there is introduction of the SmartPill, which is a disposable pill that measures pH, temperature, and pressure throughout the GI tract. We propose a pilot study to validate a new method of gastric analysis with the ingestion of the SmartPill with a meal of a known buffering capacity to measure both the acidity and quantity of acid output in the stomach. We will validate this method by comparing it to the accepted gastric aspiration method under maximally stimulated conditions. We will study healthy volunteers for the validation phase and then study patients with known acid related disorders to assess its usefulness in patients. Interested subjects will report to the NIH outpatient gastrointestinal clinic for evaluation to be followed by a 3 day in-patient admission and 2 subsequent clinic visits. Subjects will have gastric analysis of basal, meal stimulated, and pharmacologically stimulated rates with both the conventional and study methods. Outcomes will include a quantitative measurement of gastric acid output in unit time, normal meal stimulated acid output values in healthy volunteers and patients with acid related disorders, and the assessment of acid suppression in patients treated with a variety of anti-secretory medications. We have just begun enrolling patients and therefore there are no accomplishments that can be reported at this time.
| Weinstein, D H; deRijke, S; Chow, C C et al. (2013) A new method for determining gastric acid output using a wireless pH-sensing capsule. Aliment Pharmacol Ther 37:1198-209 |
