The Montreal Consensus defines gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) as "a condition that develops when refluxing the contents of the stomach causes unpleasant symptoms and/or complications". It may be associated with other specific complications such as esophageal strictures, Barrett's esophagus, or esophageal adenocarcinoma. GERD affects approximately 20% of the adult population, mainly in countries with high economic status1.
Ambulatory pH monitoring of pathological reflux (acid exposure time of more than 6%) allows us to distinguish the relationship between symptoms and acidic or non-acidic gastroesophageal reflux2,3. In patients unresponsive to PPI (proton pump inhibitor) therapy, pH monitoring can answer whether it is pathological gastroesophageal reflux and why the patient does not respond to standard PPI therapy. Various pH and impedance monitoring options are currently offered. One of the newer possibilities is wireless monitoring using implantable devices4,5.
GERD is associated with lower esophageal sphincter (LES) disorder, where the contractions shown during esophageal manometry are not pathological but have a reduced amplitude in long-term GERD. LES consists of smooth muscle and maintains tonic contractions due to myogenic and neurogenic factors. It relaxes due to vagal-mediated inhibition involving nitric oxide as a neurotransmitter6.
Electrical stimulation with two pairs of electrodes was proven to increase the contraction time of the LES in a canine reflux model7. The relaxation of the LES including the residual pressure during swallowing was not affected by both low and high frequency stimulation. High-frequency stimulation is an obvious choice because it requires less power and extends the battery life.
Although electrostimulation treatment (ET) of the lower esophageal sphincter is a relatively new concept in the treatment of patients with GERD, this therapy was shown to be safe and effective. This form of treatment has been shown to provide significant and lasting relief from the symptoms of GERD while eliminating the need for PPI treatment and reducing esophageal acid exposure8,9,10.
The current state-of-the-art pH sensor for diagnostics of GERD is the Bravo device11,12. At an estimated volume of 1.7 cm3, it can be implanted directly into the esophagus with or without visual endoscopic feedback and provides 24 h+ monitoring of pH in the esophagus.
Considering that electrostimulation therapy is one of the most promising alternatives for treating GERD not responding to standard therapy8,13, it makes sense to provide the data from the pH sensor to the neurostimulator. The recent research shows a clear path to future development in this field which will lead to rigid all-in-one implantable devices which will reside at the site of neurostimulation14,15. For this purpose, the ISFET (ion-sensitive field-effect transistor) is one of the best types of sensors because of its miniature nature, the possibility of on-chip integration of a reference electrode (gold in this case), and sufficiently high sensitivity. On silicon, the ISFET resembles the structure of a standard MOSFET (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor). However, the gate, normally connected to an electrical terminal, is replaced by a layer of active material in direct contact with the surrounding environment. In the case of pH-sensitive ISFETs, this layer is formed by silicon nitride (Si3N4)16.
The main disadvantage of endoscopically implantable devices is the inherent limitation of the battery size, which may lead to a reduced lifetime of these devices or motivate the manufacturers to develop advanced algorithms that will deliver the required effect at a lower energy cost. One of the examples of such an algorithm would be a closed-loop system for on-demand neurostimulation therapy of GERD. Similar to continuous glucose meters (CGM) + insulin pump systems17, such a system would employ an esophageal pH sensor or another sensor to detect the current pressure of the lower esophageal sphincter together with a neurostimulation unit.
The response to the neurostimulation therapy and the requirements for neurostimulation patterns can be individual13. Thus, it is important to develop independent sensors that could be used either for diagnosis and characterization of the dysfunction or to actively participate in calibrating the neurostimulation system according to the individual requirements of the patients18. These sensors should be as small as possible to not affect the normal functionality of the organ.
This manuscript describes a method of design and fabrication of an ISFET based pH sensor with amplitude-shift keying (ASK) transmitter and a small footprint passive rectenna-based receiver. Based on the simple architecture of the solution, the pH data can be received by an external receiver or even the implantable neurostimulator without any significant volume or power penalty. The ASK modulation is chosen because of the nature of the passive receiver, which is only capable of detection of received RF signal power (often called "received signal strength"). The schematic diagram, which is embedded as Supplementary material, shows the construction of the device. It is powered directly from two AG1 alkaline batteries, which provide a voltage between 2.0-3.0 V (based on the state of charge). The batteries power the internal microcontroller, which utilizes its ADC (analog-to-digital converter), DAC (digital-to-analog converter), internal operation amplifier, and FVR (fixed-voltage reference) peripherals to bias the ISFET pH sensor. The resulting "gate" voltage (the gold reference electrode) is proportional to the pH of the surrounding environment. A stable Ids current is provided by a low-side R2 sensing resistor. The source of the ISFET sensor is connected to the non-inverting input of the operational amplifier, while the inverting input is connected to the output voltage of the DAC module set to 960 mV. The output of the operational amplifier is connected to the drain pin of the ISFET. This operational amplifier regulates the drain voltage so that the voltage difference on the R2 resistor is always 960 mV; thus, a constant bias current of 29 µA flows through the ISFET (when in normal operation). The gate voltage is then measured with an ADC. The microcontroller then powers on the RF transmitter via one of the GPIO (general purpose input/output) pins and transmits the sequence. The RF transmitter circuit involves a crystal and matching network which matches the output to 50 Ω impedance.
For the experiments demonstrated here, we used a pig stomach with a long section of the esophagus mounted in a standardized plastic model. This is a commonly used model for practicing endoscopic techniques such as ESD (endoscopic submucosal dissection), POEM (oral endoscopic myotomy), endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR), hemostasis, etc. Concerning the closest possible anatomical parameters approaching human organs, we used the stomach and esophagus of pigs weighing 40-50 kg.