COMMENTARY

Oesophagus

Argon plasma coagulation therapy for ablation of Barrett’s oesophagus

J Deviere

Department of Gastroenterology, "ULB, Hospital Erasme", Bruxelles B 1070, Belgium; jdeviere@ulb.ac.be

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Endoscopic thermoablation with argon plasma coagulation (APC) for Barrett’s oesophagus is most effective for shorter segments but "buried" glands do occur. APC should remain in the area of experimental clinical studies

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Keywords: Barrett’s oesophagus; argon plasma coagulation; proton pump inhibitors

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Barrett’s oesophagus (BO) is undoubtedly associated with an increased risk of adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus.¹ Now that therapeutic endoscopy techniques have improved, it is therefore tempting to ablate Barrett’s intestinal metaplasia in order to decrease the risk of tumour development. However, ablation therapy is still controversial, especially for patients having no dysplasia, due to: (1) their low risk of cancer; (2) the risk associated with the technique of ablation; and (3) the fact that we do not know if Barrett’s ablation will really decrease the risk of cancer in the long term in an individual patient.

The rationale for current ablative therapy began with the observation that destruction or ablation of intestinal metaplasia associated with acid suppression results in its rapid replacement by a squamous epithelium.² Several groups of investigators have performed clinical studies evaluating the effectiveness of BO ablation associated with proton pump inhibitor (PPI) treatment. For patient . . . [Full text of this article]

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Barr, H, Stone, N, Rembacken, B (2005). ENDOSCOPIC THERAPY FOR BARRETT'S OESOPHAGUS. Gut 54: 875-884 [Full Text]