Lay summary
Gastrointestinal (GI) disorders affect up to 30% of the world’s population, causing substantial clinical, societal, and economic burdens. Treatment options for these disorders are limited, causing frustration for patients and clinicians alike. Like the heart, the stomach is controlled by underlying electrical rhythms, with abnormal electrical activation in GI disorders. However, no current treatment exists for eliminating abnormal activation in the stomach.
Our team has pioneered gastric ablation as a technique for eliminating abnormal electrical activation of the stomach, where targeted energy is delivered to create a small scar that blocks that area from activating. We have validated this technique in open-surgery in our pre-clinical laboratory. In this HRC project, we will now explore Māori perspectives to guide GI interventions and ablation, create a computational model and validate ablation parameters on human tissue to inform clinical translation, and develop minimally-invasive methods of performing ablation on the stomach via endoscopy (i.e. down-the-throat).