Investigating viability of intestine using spectroscopy: a pilot study

Area of Science:

• Medical Technology
• Gastroenterology
• Surgical Innovation

Background:

• Assessing bowel viability is critical in acute mesenteric ischemia treatment.
• Differentiating viable from nonviable tissue remains a clinical challenge.
• Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) offers a potential real-time solution.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of DRS in assessing bowel tissue viability.
• To investigate DRS performance in an in vivo animal model of ischemia-reperfusion.
• To correlate spectroscopic data with histopathological findings.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Sprague-Dawley rats subjected to varying durations of superior mesenteric artery occlusion (30-90 min).
• Acquired DRS spectra from bowel tissue pre-ischemia, post-ischemia, and post-reperfusion.
• Compared DRS data with histopathological scoring (Chiu/Park score).

Main Results:

• DRS successfully differentiated high-level ischemic injury (Chiu/Park score ≥5) from lower levels.
• Spectroscopic classification correctly identified 8/9 low-level ischemic injury samples.
• All 11 high-level ischemic injury samples (grade ≥5) were accurately identified by DRS.

Conclusions:

• DRS shows potential for intraoperative assessment of bowel viability in real time.
• This technology may reduce unnecessary resection of viable tissue or insufficient resection of nonviable tissue.
• DRS could potentially decrease mortality and morbidity associated with intestinal ischemia-reperfusion.