A non-invasive technique for gastric motility measurement

Abstract

There are various approaches to the assessment of gastric motor function. These include the use of test meals (Hunt and Spurrell, 1951), gastric multilumen catheters or pressure sensitive capsules (Eisner, 1971), measurement of the rate of drug absorption (Heading et al., 1973), the passage of radioactive isotope labelled meals (Griffith et al., 1966) or the appearances at barium meal examination (Kreel, 1973). Each of these techniques has its associated problems (Sheiner, 1975) and may be inappropriate to repeated or lengthy use on the same subject. There is thus a need for a non-invasive, non-radiological method of measuring gastric contractions in man.