Prospective study examining the impact of multichannel intraluminal impedance on antireflux surgery

Reflux monitoring using combined multichannel intraluminal impedance (MII) and pH-metry increases the sensitivity for identifying gastroesophageal reflux episodes. The likelihood of a positive symptom index (SI) for patients with reflux disease (gastroesophageal reflux disease [GERD] or nonerosive reflux disease [NERD]) receiving proton pump inhibitor (PPI) treatment has been used to select candidates for antireflux surgery. Little is known about the advantages of MII-pH monitoring compared with pH monitoring alone for evaluating GERD/NERD patients off PPI treatment considered as candidates for antireflux surgery or for assessing changes in MII-pH-detected reflux episodes after antireflux surgery. This study aimed to determine the additional value of MII over pH-metry alone for patients off PPI treatment before and after antireflux surgery.

For this study 12 patients (4 women and 8 men; mean age, 45 years; range, 27-74 years) were evaluated using ambulatory MII-pH monitoring before and 3 months after mesh-augmented hiatoplasty. Reflux events were identified by MII-pH (A) and pH-metry (B) as patients recorded symptoms on a data logger. For each symptom, a symptom index was calculated for reflux events identified by MII-pH and by pH-monitoring alone.

Preoperatively, MII-pH monitoring identified 71.9 +/- 8.4 reflux episodes, whereas pH monitoring identified only 51.0 +/- 7.8 (p < 0.05). Postoperatively, MII-pH monitoring identified 35.5 +/- 6.6 reflux episodes, whereas pH monitoring identified only 19.6 +/- 4.7 (p < 0.05). The pre- and postoperative symptom index for MII-pH monitoring was higher than pH monitoring (preoperative 91.7% vs 25%, p = 0.006; postoperative 50% vs 16.7%, p = 0.012).

Combined MII-pH-metry improves the pre- and postoperative assessment of GERD patients off PPI and results in a higher symptom-reflux association.