2006年NPR美国国家公共电台五月-Tiny Video Camera Offers Inside View of H

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Alex Chadwick: From NPR News, it is Day to Day. The wonders of modern medicine often do cost us a little something in personal dignity. Think of this word, colonoscopy, if you haven't had the occasion to sample the procedure yet, you will know what I mean when you get a little older. Well, now, there is another development called Wireless¹ Capsule Endoscopes. Doctor Sydney Spiesel, medical columnist² for the online magazine Slate³, says these work better than the periscope⁴, like cameras, that are usually used to examine the intestines⁶. Doctor Spiesel spoke⁷ earlier with my colleague Madeleine Brand.

Madeleine Brand: Tell us about this new technology, why is it so thrilling?

Sydney Spiesel: This new technology, frankly⁸, knocks me out. Imagine, um, something that is, looks like and is about the same shape as and the same size as a large vitamin capsule. And believe it or not, it contains a video camera, four incredibly tiny little bitsy light sources, a television transmitter and a battery. And as soon as the patient swallows it, it gets activated⁹, and the disposal camera starts to transmit images of the inside of the intestines, about two images a second. And the patient wears a kind of pack on their belt that records all of this. As it drifts south through the patient, it just keeps running until the battery runs out, which is about 8 hours later, and which in most patients it's traveled the full length of the small intestine⁵.

Madeleine Brand: And then out it comes?

Sydney Spiesel: Oh, we certainly hope so, most of the time it comes out, we, hm, occasionally, in patients who have strictures, tightenings of the intestine as a result of illness, there have been some times when it's gotten stuck. Although in the studies that were done, well, it always sort of either washed out or it could be retrieved¹⁰ very easily.

Madeleine Brand: Well, why would you need to be rooting around in someone's intestines, what are you looking for?

Sydney Spiesel: Well, you are looking for diseases that affect the inside of the intestine. Sometimes, these are sort of obvious, you might have a patient who has some gastrointestinal bleeding, which might be a sign of a polyp, or it might be a sign of inflammation of the lining¹¹ of the bowel¹², it could be a sign even of a tumor¹³. And it turns out that the swallowed capsules are one of the best ways of identifying bleeding sites, but also there is a disease called Crohn's Disease, which causes a lot of misery¹⁴. It's really a, a very difficult disease, in a lot of ways. People are uncomfortable. They often have a lot of diarrhea and abdominal¹⁵ pain, and it turns out that the capsule method is much more sensitive, as a way of diagnosing Crohn's Disease than the endoscope, that is the visual things that doctors might pass up or down through a patient, in this case pass up through a patient.

Madeleine Brand: And Syd, I understand there was a recent study in Berlin that compared this new high tech method of diagnosing Crohn's Disease with the regular method. And, and how did the wireless high tech method measure up?

Sydney Spiesel: Well, the high-tech¹⁶ method turned out to be much better than the previous methods that involved either looking or doing X-rays. Eh, this group in Berlin at Humboldt University, found that they were able to diagnose the disease 35% more frequently than the best results obtained by the best methods, the methods that were formerly¹⁷ thought to be sort of the gold standard methods. So it clearly is, is much better. It also identifies the disease higher up in the small intestine than anyone expected it would be, which might change our strategy about how to treat the disease.

Madeleine Brand: Expert opinion from Doctor Sydney Spiesel. He's a Yale medical professor and a columnist for Slate.com. Thank you Syd.

Sydney Spiesel: Thank you.

Alex Chadwick: And that interview by my colleague Madeleine Brand.

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Words in NPR
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colonoscopy: [医]结肠镜检查
Wireless Capsule Endoscope: 无线胶囊内镜
Slate: 《石板书》,有一些深度评论,现已被msn收购
knock out: 敲空,击倒,打破,破坏,使筋疲力竭
stricture: a rule that strictly limits what you can do;(体内管道的)狭窄
gastrointestinal: of or relating to the stomach and intestines;胃肠的,与胃肠有关的
polyp: a small lump that grows inside your body because of an illness, but is not likely to harm you;息肉
Crohn's Disease: 克罗恩氏病(CD),一种慢性肉芽肿性炎症,病变可累及胃肠道各部位,而以末段回肠及其邻近结肠为主,多呈节段性,非对称性分布
diarrhea: an illness in which waste from the bowels is watery and comes out often;痢疾,腹泻
Humboldt University: 德国洪堡柏林大学