The contribution of abdominal ultrasound in diagnosis and evaluation of gastroesophageal reflux

Objective: To determine the role of abdominal ultrasonography in evaluation ofgastroesophageal reflux (GER), to compare this method with esophageal scintigraphy and to makecorrelations between these investigations, GERDQ 2009 reflux questionnaire and the histologic aspects inpatients with Barrett’s esophagus (BE). Material and methods: 30 patients with BE were subjected toupper digestive endoscopy with biopsy, esophageal scintigraphy and abdominal ultrasound. They alsofilled out the GERDQ 2009 reflux questionnaire. We tried to find correlations between these data usingKolmogorov-Smirnov test in order to find the normality of distributed variables, Mann-Whitney test andStudent test for comparing two groups of variables and ANOVA test, Scheffer or Kruskal-Wallis test forcomparing three groups of variables. We used X2 or Fischer test for investigating the dependencebetween two nominal variables and Pearson and Spearman coefficient for two continuous variables.Results: Ultrasonography determined that female sex is correlated with a more severe GER (r=-0.4;p=0.02). There was a statistically significant correlation between the severity of GER estimated duringscintigraphy and during ultrasonography (r=0.755; p<0.001). We obtained a statistically significantcorrelation between GERDQ 2009 and scintigraphy (r=0.604; p<0.01) and between GERDQ 2009 andultrasonography (r=0.57; p=0.001). Previous treatment was correlated with GERDQ 2009 (p<0.001) butthe duration of treatment was not (p=0.1). Conclusion: Female patients had a more severe GER.Ultrasonography and scintigraphy have similar results in diagnosis and grading GERD and the results arecorrelated with GERDQ 2009 questionnaire. There is no correlation between histological aspects and theseverity of GER. Patients with demonstrated severe reflux during the study used more oftenantisecretory treatment.