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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Pathophysiol. Sep 22, 2025; 16(3): 106482
Published online Sep 22, 2025. doi: 10.4291/wjgp.v16.i3.106482
Published online Sep 22, 2025. doi: 10.4291/wjgp.v16.i3.106482
Comparison of gastric emptying of solid and semi-solid meals using real-time ultrasonography in healthy Sri Lankan adults
Lakmali Amarasiri, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Colombo 80000, Western Province, Sri Lanka
Minerva de Silva, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, St George’s Hospital, London SW17 0QT, United Kingdom
Hithanadura Janaka de Silva, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Ragama 11010, Western Province, Sri Lanka
Niranga M Devanarayana, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Ragama 11010, Western, Sri Lanka
Author contributions: Amarasiri L, de Silva M, de Silva HJ and Devanarayana NM contributed to the concept; Amarasiri L, de Silva M and Devanarayana NM collected the data; Amarasiri L analyzed the data and wrote the initial manuscript; Devanarayana NM, and de Silva HJ contributed by critically analyzing and revising the paper; and all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by the University of Kelaniya Grant, No. RP/03/04/11/01/2011.
Institutional review board statement: This study was supported by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, No. P93/05/2013.
Informed consent statement: Informed written consent was obtained from all study participants.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The dataset used during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Niranga M Devanarayana, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Thalagolla Road, Ragama 11010, Western, Sri Lanka. niranga@kln.ac.lk
Received: February 27, 2025
Revised: April 29, 2025
Accepted: July 3, 2025
Published online: September 22, 2025
Processing time: 204 Days and 14.7 Hours
Revised: April 29, 2025
Accepted: July 3, 2025
Published online: September 22, 2025
Processing time: 204 Days and 14.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Semisolids are commonly believed to empty from the stomach faster than solids, with a significantly shorter lag time. However, using semisolid and solid meals of identical volume and nutritional composition, we demonstrated that gastric emptying rates and antral motor activities were comparable for both meal types up to three hours post-ingestion, with similar half-emptying times. Real-time ultrasonography using a pre-prepared, commercially available, and culturally acceptable semisolid test meal proved to be a reliable and valid method for assessing gastric emptying. This approach offers an effective alternative to traditional solid meal gastric emptying measurements.