Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 11 (IANS) For the first time in south India, a hospital here has introduced ‘Wireless Capsule Endoscopy’, a new diagnostic tool for the non-invasive detection of small bowel diseases.

D. Jayakumar, Hepatologist and senior consultant Gastroenterologist at the NIMS Medicity near here, said the endoscopy was an innovative, non-invasive diagnostic tool to access small bowels to diagnose small bowel bleeding sites, tumours and ulcers.

“Instead of lying down still on an examination table, while using wireless endoscopy people could walk, sit and even return to normal work while the capsules are recording images,” said Jayakumar.

Capsule Endoscopy is the most advanced facility in modern medicine and does not require insertion of endoscope through the mouth.

“Capsule Endoscope is a swallowable video capsule containing a tiny camera. It can take two pictures every second for up to eight hours, transmitting images to a data recorder - about the size of a portable CD player - that patients wear around the waist. Once the patient swallows the capsule, it takes pictures of the inside of the gastrointestinal tract,” said Jayakumar.

Capsule endoscopy is primarily used to examine areas of the small intestine that cannot be seen by other types of endoscopy such as colonoscopy or esophago-gastro-duodenoscopy (EGD).

In November last year, the 350-bed NIMS became just the seventh hospital in the country to install Fibro Scan, a state-of-the-art scanning machine meant to scan liver ailments.