Innovation Fuels Growth In GI Endoscopy

Article preview from Medtech Insight - August 2013

Advances in imaging and interventional endoscopy are improving cancer detection and enabling less invasive approaches to diagnose and treat disorders in the gastrointestinal tract. These emerging procedures are poised to fuel growth in the $7 billion global market for GI endoscopy.

Innovation Fuels Growth In GI Endoscopy

Article preview from Medtech Insight - August 2013

Technological advances in imaging and interventional endoscopy are paving the way for new and improved approaches to diagnosing and treating gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. At this year’s Digestive Disease Week (DDW) meeting, held in Chicago in May, researchers and manufacturers were showcasing new endoscopes, tools, and imaging technologies designed to improve diagnostic performance, clinical workflow, and safety during GI endoscopy. These technologies are helping to improve cancer detection and are allowing gastroenterologists to use less invasive approaches to procedures that have typically been performed using surgical or percutaneous techniques. These emerging procedures are poised to fuel growth in the global market for GI endoscopy, which is currently valued at $7 billion, according to EndoChoice Inc., a competitor in this space.

Colonoscopy is widely accepted as the gold standard for detecting colorectal cancer and precancerous polyps known as adenomas. However, physicians still “miss” a certain number of adenomas during colonoscopy and interval cancers do occur. The adenoma miss rate varies considerably in the literature, but researchers have reported a miss rate ranging from 24% to 42%.

Over the last 10 years, device manufacturers have been developing new technologies and different imaging modalities in an effort to improve visualization and to decrease the adenoma miss rate during colonoscopy. (See "GI Endoscopy: Thriving on Innovation" — Medtech Insight, June 2010.) And yet, the colonoscope’s field of view has not really changed much in the past three decades. Most forward-viewing colonoscopes available today provide no more than a 170-degree field of view. But a new groundbreaking colonoscope with a 330-degree field of view debuted at this year’s DDW that could potentially revolutionize colorectal cancer screening by allowing physicians to visualize almost twice as much anatomy as traditional forward-viewing colonoscopes.

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