Low-cost instrumentation for the diagnosis of Hirschsprung's disease

In Hirschsprung's disease, the internal anorectal sphincter fails to relax in response to rectal distension, which strongly indicates the absence of rectoanal inhibitory reflex (RAIR). Hirschsprung's disease is a very common case particularly encountered in the newborns in our region. Development of a manometric system targeted specifically for the diagnosis of this disease at a reasonable cost is an urgent need identified by our regional colorectal surgeons. These surgeons indicated that commercially available anorectal manometers are too expensive to acquire. Therefore, in our research we tried to develop a low-cost single balloon-transducer system, which only provides information about RAIR, and hence diagnoses the Hirschsprung's disease. The hardware part of our instrumentation is made of a latex balloon, pressure transducer, amplifier, and A/D converter circuits, which all collects the pressure readings and sends the data to the computer. The manometer system software, programmed based on Delphi, displays these readings and patient information on a computer screen. This designed system was successful enough to perform manometric recording of RAIR in the anorectal ampulla of rabbits and rats.