High-pressure balloon catheter for real-time pressure monitoring in the esophagus

摘要

This paper reports the development of a new catheter for esophageal manometry, implemented by connecting a miniature high-pressure sensing balloon to an external pressure sensor. The integration of the catheter into a signal conditioning and data acquisition system for realtime pressure monitoring is also described. In order to characterize the sensitivity of the novel self-contained air balloon design, an experimental setup for simulating the esophageal motility was utilized. The results show that the self-contained air balloon catheter is suitable for measuring various waveforms typical to the ones generated in esophageal motility pathologies.