COMMENTARY

Barrett's oesophagus

Ablating Barrett’s metaplastic epithelium: are the techniques ready for clinical use?

J J G H M Bergman, P Fockens

Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr J J G H M Bergman
Department of Gastroenterology, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, the Netherlands; j.j.bergman@amc.uva.nl

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Testing of endoscopic ablation techniques for Barrett’s oesophagus should follow a "top down approach"

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Keywords: Barrett’s oesophagus; multipolar electrocoagulation; argon plasma coagulation; acid suppression

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

Barrett’s oesophagus (BO) is a condition that causes many controversies. Identification and treatment of Barrett’s patients gives rise to many questions such as: how great is the risk of malignant degeneration for the entire group of Barrett’s patients and for individual patients? Does this risk justify the efforts, costs, and risk of endoscopic surveillance? Are we doing more harm than good in subjecting patients with non-dysplastic BO to endoscopic surveillance? Are we reducing patients’ quality of life by making them (and their insurance companies) unduly worry about their condition?^1,2 The ultimate solution to these problems would be a cure for the condition, either by reverting Barrett’s mucosa to normal squamous mucosa or by preventing its malignant degeneration once it has developed.

Protagonists of surgical antireflux procedures have claimed that elimination of reflux of gastric and duodenal contents into the oesophagus will prevent malignant transformation in BO but such . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

A randomised controlled trial of ablation of Barrett’s oesophagus with multipolar electrocoagulation versus argon plasma coagulation in combination with acid suppression: long term results

P Sharma, S Wani, A P Weston, A Bansal, M Hall, S Mathur, A Prasad, and R E Sampliner
Gut 2006 55: 1233-1239. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]