You are here

  • Home
  • Online First
  • Reassessing gastroscopy practices: the need for improved methodology and interpretation – author’s reply

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letter
Reassessing gastroscopy practices: the need for improved methodology and interpretation – author’s reply
  1. David Robert Beaton1,2,
  2. Linda Sharp2,
  3. Matthew D Rutter2,3
  1. 1Gastroenterology, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, North Shields, UK
  2. 2Newcastle University Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  3. 3Population Health Sciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr David Robert Beaton, Gastroenterology, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, North Shields, UK; dbeaton1{at}nhs.net

https://doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2024-333437

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    We thank Xu et al for their interest in our recent paper1 and for highlighting potential methodological issues.2 Our study analysed the diagnostic yield from over 380 000 gastroscopies performed in the UK to investigate the cause of patient symptoms, emphasising the low diagnostic yield from common upper gastrointestinal symptoms—namely dyspepsia and reflux—and the inefficient utilisation of gastroscopy resources.

    Xu et al raise two important methodological issues: the reliance on endoscopic findings without histological confirmation for the analysis and the hierarchical categorisation of symptoms.

    We agree that the lack of histological confirmation is a limitation, likely resulting in a small number of …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors DRB drafted the letter, with input from LS and MDR.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.