Introduction
Healthy bowel function is an important factor when judging the advisability of early enteral nutrition in critically ill patients, but long-term observation and objective evaluation of gastrointestinal motility are difficult. We developed a non-invasive monitoring system capable of quantifying and visualizing gastrointestinal motility in real time. In the study gastrointestinal motility was performed in patients with severe sepsis using this developed bowel sound analysis system, and the correlation between bowel sounds and changes over time in blood concentrations of IL-6, which is associated with sepsis severity, was evaluated.