Patent Application
20200352767
This invention relates to weight control, and more particularly to a device and method for controlling body weight via implantable net-shaped basket system.
Obesity has been steadily increasing in the United States and worldwide. From the perspective of diet, obese patients have poor self-control in food intake, or due to the failure of the neurofeedback mechanism, they eat too much food, especially the high-fat diet, which is the main cause of obesity. When ingested fat gets into the bloodstream, some of it is oxidized to provide the body with the heat it needs to function. If eat too much, the quantity of heat that airframe place absorbs exceeds normal to use up, the quantity that the adipose in food enters person adipose bank to store can increase, form adiposity thereby. Approximately 500,000 people in North America and Western Europe are estimated to die from obesity-related diseases every year and obesity is estimated to affect more than one billion adults worldwide. There is a pressing and unmet need for a solution to the epidemic problem. [03] Various techniques have been known for reducing obesity in patients. One general category of obesity surgery targets the relative absorption of food. This type of procedure seeks to shorten the length of, or otherwise modify, the small intestine to limit the amount of foods that is ultimately absorbed by the body (malabsorption). Common examples of malabsorption procedures include: gastric bypass (e.g., Roux-en-Y gastric bypass); billiopancreatic diversion; and intestinal bypass. Other surgical methods address obesity via restriction of food intake. This type of surgical procedure seeks to alter the size (volume) of the stomach, therefore limiting the amount of food it can hold. The result is a premature feeling of satiety and a reduced intake of calories. Common examples of procedures producing food intake restriction include: vertical banded gastroplasty; gastric banding; and laparoscopic gastric banding. Through malabsorption, food intake restriction, or some combination of both, weight is reduced since less food either enters the stomach and/or less food remains in the small intestine long enough to be digested and absorbed.
In addition to surgery, devices and procedures have developed recent years which aim to:
(1) Restricting meal capacity and/or flow;
(2) Applying a barrier to digestion and/or absorption.
For example, devices and procedures which aim to restrict food influx into the stomach include banding devices, such as an adjustable gastroplasty ring and banding procedures (see U.S. Pub. No. 2004/0049209 A1 and 2004/0097989 A1 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,339); an implanted restrictor at the gastro-esophageal junction as see in WO 03/086246 A1 and WO 2004/064680 A1; and the positioning tool in WO 2004/064685 A1. Other devices aim to create an artificial distension signal in the stomach only by occupying space. Such as with balloons as in WO 02/35980 A2 and WO 2004/019765 A3. Other intragastric expanders are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,675,809 B2 to Stack et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,868,141 A. Additionally, devices that stimulate the vagus nerve at the stomach may function by creating neural traffic simulating that invoked by distension, and thereby also constitutes an artificial distension signal (U.S. Pat. No. 6,587,719 B1 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,299,091 B2).
Although there have been many devices and procedures for weight control, it is necessary to invent a device that can control food intake quantitatively with feedback mechanism. The invention utilizes a basket made of a biocompatible material and embedded with a pressure sensor to restrict feeding and measure the pressure on the outer wall of the stomach in real time. Based on the pressure level, one can decide whether to continue or stop eating.
The present invention comprises a device and method for controlling body weight via a monitoring and feedback device for food intake utilizing MEMS pressure sensors embedded inside the basket material. The basket is custom made for each patient by 3D printing technology and is placed on the outer wall of the patient's stomach. The measured pressure value is integrated into a microcircuit and is transmitted to the wearable monitor via Bluetooth. When the patient eats too much, the pressure reaches the threshold level set by the doctor, and the monitor will immediately remind the obese person to stop eating. If the patient ignores the warning and continues to eat, the basket will reach its distensible limit, forcing a patient to stop taking food. The stomach is getting constrained gradually by the device during the feeding process, until the constrain reaches a threshold level to achieve the purpose of weight control.
The following drawings are illustrative of particular embodiments of the present invention and therefore do not limit the scope of the invention. The drawings are not to scale (unless so stated) and are intended for use in conjunction with the explanations in the following detailed description. Embodiments will hereinafter be described in conjunction with the appended drawings wherein like numerals denote like elements.
The present invention comprises a device and method for controlling body weight via a monitoring and feedback device for food intake.
Based on a physician's assessment of height, weight, the morphology of the stomach and energy consumption of obese patients, the basket 110 is custom made for each patient by 3D printing technology using biocompatible material, such as silicone material, PU (Polyurethane) etc. The material has good elasticity, it can surround the outer wall of the stomach well, even when the obese patients are in hungry condition, but won't affect gastric wriggle at the same time. The hardness, thickness and braid density has a lot effect on the physical properties of materials, and silicone materials with 10-40D (shore hardness), 0.2-2 mm in thickness and 10-35 PPI (pies per inch) are used in this invention.
As shown in
The MEMS pressure sensors 120 are embedded inside the basket material and placed on the side facing the stomach (see
Communication module 125 is designed to transmit the measured pressure value to other devices, such as wearable display 130, including any suitable hardware (e.g., antenna, Bluetooth), software, or any combination thereof. Batteries 123, for example, can be rechargeable or non-rechargeable. Memory 124 may comprise any volatile, non-volatile, magnetic or electrical medium such as RAM, ROM, NVRAM, EEPROM, flash memory, or any other digital medium.
In one embodiment, the sensors 120 locate on each node of the basket 110, the number ranging from 20 to 200 (see
The volume of the stomach gradually expands during the feeding process, so the basket 110 is gradually stretched, and the pressure value measured by the sensors increases accordingly until the feeding stops. Due to the inherent physical properties of the material, such as elastic modulus, expansion coefficient, etc., there is a certain functional relationship between the volume and stretching force (or the pressure value) during the process of the basket being stretched by the stomach eating. The function relationship is as shown in
