LETTER

Inadequate statistical power in Barrett’s oesophagus ablation study

C H Lim¹, V Ramappa¹, M M Ahmed¹

¹ Department of Gastroenterology, Good Hope Hospital NHS Trust, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, B75 7RR, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr C H Lim
Department of Gastroenterology, Good Hope Hospital NHS Trust, Rectory Road, Sutton Coldfield, W Midlands, B75 7RR, UK; chee.lim@goodhope.nhs.uk

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

We found the article of Sharma et al (Gut 2006;55:1233–9) of great interest. They have looked into 2-year data comparing the efficacy of achieving complete reversal (endoscopic and histological) between multipolar electrocoagulation (MPEC) and argon plasma coagulation (APC) in patients with Barrett’s oesophagus.

This was an important study if one accepts the hypothesis that the reversal between MPEC and APC may reduce the risk of adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus. However, we believe that the authors have misinterpreted their power calculation for the study and failed to address the potential limitations of both methods if they were to be adopted into standard clinical practice and shown to be of clinical benefit.

Firstly, there were no results on the practical aspects of both procedures for the readers to know whether they would be acceptable to the patients and feasible from the endoscopist point of view. We suspect that these frequent . . . [Full text of this article]

Matthew Hall², Sachin Wani², Prateek Sharma²

² Veterans Affairs Medical Center & University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr P Sharma
Division of Gastroenterology, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 4801 E Linwood Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64128-2295, USA; psharma@kumc.edu

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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]