Paediatric and adult colonic manometry: A tool to help unravel the pathophysiology of constipation

Figure 5 Manometric traces of colonic motor activity recorded by a fibre-optic manometry catheter with 90 sensors spaced at 1 cm intervals. A: To represent common sensor spacing for current published colonic recordings, the data set, obtained through “high resolution” manometry, is sub-sampled to present every 10th channel (10 cm spacing, top); B: The complete data set, captured at 1 cm intervals, is displayed at the bottom. Note that at 10 cm spacing, the most proximal three channels reveal what appears to be non-propagating pressure waves. However, when the full data set is viewed (B), a series of short-extent retrograde propagating events are detected. These events are missed when spatial resolution is poor. Modified from[41].