Experts create controllable gastric balloon to aid weight loss
Now scientists have overhauled the humble gastric balloon – producing a device that both inflates and deflates to keep it effective for longer.
Gastric balloons have been around for decades: such devices are temporarily placed in the stomach and inflated with air or fluid to create a feeling of fullness and reduce the desire to eat.
But over time these devices become less effective, with weight loss often hitting a plateau – possibly because the body grows accustomed to the sensation the balloon creates.
Now experts say they have created a gastric balloon that can be inflated just before eating and contracted afterwards, simulating the presence, and emptying, of food in the stomach.
“What we try to do here is, in essence, simulate the mechanical effects of having a meal,” said Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s hospital, and the senior author of the study.
Traverso noted some gastric balloons can already be increased in volume over time, but said that often involves an invasive procedure. Instead the team decided to create a dynamic system.
