• gastroparesis

Gastroparesis is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder characterised by symptoms of nausea, vomiting, early satiety, postprandial fullness, bloating and abdominal discomfort.1 Definitive diagnosis requires objective evidence of delayed gastric emptying (GE), typically assessed via scintigraphy or stable isotope breath tests with a standardised meal.2 The pathophysiological mechanisms and natural history of gastroparesis remain unclear, at least in part due to the paucity of a comprehensive, accurate and consistent description of the epidemiology.

The recently published study by Ye et al in Gut partly addresses this need as the first population-based study to describe the epidemiology and outcomes of gastroparesis in Europe. The study has a number of epidemiological strengths that make it particularly noteworthy, the most significant of which is that data acquisition used the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) database in the UK. The CPRD is an anonymised data source of general practitioner records with 4.4 million active patients comprising 7% of the entire UK population. The CPRD is representative in terms of age, sex, ethnicity and body mass index.3 Over half of these individuals’ records also have linked data to secondary care and mortality records.3 After medical records review of these diverse electronic repositories, the authors identified over 1000 patients with a diagnosis of gastroparesis throughout the UK, facilitating prevalence estimates by …