Fantastic Voyage to Fight Colon Cancer

August 14, 2012

“Everyone over 50 should be regularly screened for colon cancer,” CEO Guy Neev tells ISRAEL21c, “yet too few people do so because the standard colonoscopy procedure is uncomfortable and invasive. Ingesting the capsule involves no preparation or discomfort, and patients can continue to go about their everyday lives—meaning that they are far more likely to take the test.”

With early screening, 90% of colorectal cancer cases are preventable, yet it’s the world’s fourth most common cancer killer, accounting for 8% of all cancer deaths, Neev points out.

X-rays spell the difference between Check-Cap and PillCam, the revolutionary imaging system pioneered about 10 years ago at Israel’s Given Imaging for visualizing and detecting abnormalities of the GI tract. “While the currently available capsule endoscopies are based on cameras and therefore required aggressive bowel cleansing, the Check-Cap imaging capsule is the first device designed to work in the colon with virtually no bowel preparation because it employs low-energy X-ray which can see through the colon content,” Neev says.

“It operates at a low energy level, with minimal radiation—the equivalent of one regular X-ray, far less than a CT scan or mammography. This is because we are imaging the colon from inside, and there’s no need for the radiation to pass through other organs.”
For more information: +972-4-821-1258, [email protected]

Source: Excerpts of an article by Daniel Ben Tal, www.israel21c.org