Clinical validation of the VIPUN™ gastric monitoring system versus manometry for the evaluation of gastric motility

Background Gastrointestinal dysmotility is frequently suspected in patients with gastroparesis, functional dyspepsia, and ileus, and in the intensive care unit. Monitoring of gastric motility in clinical practice remains challenging. A novel technology was developed to meet the medical need for a widely available bedside tool to monitor gastric motility continuously. The VIPUN™ Gastric Monitoring System (GMS) comprises a nasogastric feeding tube with intragastric balloon to allow for measuring gastric contractions. Aims To compare the performance of the VIPUN GMS versus a reference technique (manometry). Methods In this validation study in healthy subjects, the investigational catheter and a solid‐state manometry catheter were placed in the stomach concomitantly. Motility was recorded for 2.5 h: 2 h in a fasting state, followed by a 400‐kcal liquid meal, and monitoring of the fed state for the remaining half hour. The performance of both systems was compared by automated recognition and manual identification of the contractile activity. Data are presented as mean (standard deviation). Key Results The analysis set comprised 13 healthy subjects (6 women, age: 27.5 (8.1) years, BMI: 22.2 (2.46) kg/m 2 ). Automatically‐recognized contractility was strongly correlated between the two techniques (endpoint: contraction duration; Spearman ρ = 0.96, p < 0.001). A correlation was also observed between the number of individual contractions identified by expert gastroenterologists on both technologies independently ( ρ = 0.71, p = .007) and between the contractions identified by the experts and by the GMS software ( ρ = 0.87, p = 0.001). No serious or unanticipated adverse events occurred. Conclusions & Inferences The observed strong correlations with the gold standard, manometry, validate the performance of the VIPUN GMS as a gastric monitoring system.