Active clinical trials for "Barrett Esophagus"

RATIONALE: A tethered capsule endoscope may be as effective as standard sedated endoscopy of the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum in screening for Barrett esophagus. PURPOSE: This phase I/II trial is studying how well a tethered capsule endoscope works in screening participants for Barrett esophagus.

The specific aim of this study is to determine the accuracy of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) imaging for screening and diagnosis of the distal esophagus in patients undergoing a clinical esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) procedure. The accuracy of results obtained using the developed OCT imaging probe will be determined and compared with those obtained through the traditional standard of care endoscopic biopsy .

The goal of this research is to conduct a pilot clinical study to evaluate the potential use of esophageal Optical Frequency Domain Imaging (OFDI) for assessing the success and degree of injury associated with therapeutic radiofrequency ablation techniques.

The hypotheses are: 1) the intestinal stem cell marker, DCLK1, which is increased in both the epithelium and stroma in colon cancer is also increased in BE (Barrett's esophagus) with HGD (high grade dysplasia) and in EAC (esophageal adenocarcinoma), 2) this expression correlates with disease progression towards EAC and 3) eradication of cells expressing stem cell markers occurs after therapy of EMR (endoscopic mucosal resection) or RFA (radiofrequency ablation) to eradicate BE with HGD and intramucosal adenocarcinoma and esophagectomy for EAC. We will test our hypotheses with the following aims: 1) To characterize the cell specific expression patterns of intestinal stem cell biomarkers in BE patients and correlate them with serum expression and disease progression, 2) To examine prospectively the effects of EMR, RFA or esophagectomy on the expression of stem cell biomarkers and the progression to EAC.

To prospectively assess the functional aspects of the the esophageal squamous epithelial barrier and correlate this with tissue inflammation and intercellular space dilation in patients who have successfully completed endoscopic radiofrequency ablation versus balloon cryotherapy for Barrett's Esophagus related metaplasia.

This study is to examine the benefits of newly designed capsule with enhanced frame rate and wide angle compared to standard endoscopy, which may help enhance detecting esophageal diseases that otherwise may have been out of vision in the standard endoscopy, ultimately decreasing healthcare costs.

Multispectral imaging represents an exciting new field of investigation in endoscopic research. Multispectral imaging uses a specialised camera to detect multiple colours, allowing us to build a rough spectrum from each point in our image. It is widely reported that these spectra are different for different tissue types, but this is difficult to study ex vivo since de-oxygenation of the blood and decay of the tissue change these spectra considerably. The investigators have therefore designed this study to asses the different multispectral imaging spectra of Barrett's Oesophagus, which we believe might be utilised as a method to detect dysplasia in the future.

Problem statement Barrett's oesophagus is a pre-cancerous condition affecting 375,000 people in the U.K. There is a 0.5-3% yearly risk of progressing to oesophageal cancer, from which only 5% of patients will survive for 5 years after diagnosis. Diagnosing the disease at the stage of dysplasia (pre-cancerous) and early cancer improves survival. This has led to the current surveillance strategy of gastroscopy with non-targeted mapping biopsies taken from the Barrett's oesophagus every two years. The large number of biopsies required is time consuming and expensive, yet dysplasia and cancerous tissue is still missed due to the non-targeted biopsy sampling strategy. Acetic acid has been used effectively in the early detection of cervical dysplasia and cancer, and has also been used with success in a high risk Barrett's population (patients with suspected dysplasia or previously treated dysplasia), but not been studied in the lower risk Barrett's surveillance population. A diagnostic study of non-targeted mapping biopsies (current practice) versus targeted biopsies (acetic acid) in a surveillance population is needed before widespread adoption of this technique is possible.

The goal of this research is to test the imaging quality of the modified, larger diameter, tethered Spectrally Encoded Confocal Microscopy (SECM) capsule in healthy subjects, subjects with Barrett's Esophagus (BE), and subjects with Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

The primary objective of this clinical trial is to evaluate the performance of the Nvision Volumetric Laser Endomicroscopy (VLE) system to visualize subsurface tissue in subjects undergoing esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) and to identify work-flow and training implications for introducing this new imaging modality.