Comparison of measurement of integrated relaxation pressure by esophageal manometry with analysis of swallowing sounds with artificial intelligence in patients with achalasia.

Abstract

Background: Esophageal motility disorders are mainly evaluated with high-resolution manometry (HRM) which is a time-consuming and uncomfortable procedure with potential adverse events. Acoustic characterization of the swallowing has the potential to be an alternative noninvasive procedure.

Methods: We compared the findings on HRM and swallowing sounds in 43 patients who were referred for evaluation of dysphagia. The sound analysis was done with empirical mode decomposition method and with artificial intelligence (AI) and the estimated integrated relaxation pressure (IRP) from a two-layer neural network method was compared to measured IRP on HRM. The model then was tested in five patients.

Key results: IRP was estimated with high accuracy using the model developed with two-layer neural network method.

Conclusions & inferences: The analysis of acoustic properties of swallowing has the potential to be used for evaluation of esophageal motility disorders, this needs to be further evaluated in larger studies.