The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Vol 36, 596-603, Copyright © 1983 by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
A simplified method of esophageal pH monitoring for assessment of gastroesophageal reflux
L Choiniere, L Miller, R Ilves and JD Cooper
We have found that 24-hour esophageal pH monitoring is clinically useful in
the evaluation of reflux-related symptoms but that the application of this
diagnostic tool is limited by lack of simplicity and easy portability of
equipment, a time-consuming method for data analysis, and the necessity to
hospitalize patients for the study. We have resolved the first two problems
with the development of a lightweight, portable, solid-state system for
recording and analyzing the data. To assess the feasibility of utilizing an
8-hour study applicable to outpatients, we studied 30 unselected patients
referred for 24-hour pH monitoring. We separately analyzed the data from
the first 8 hours of the study and the data from the entire 24-hour period.
The correlation between the results obtained with each analysis was
excellent, indicating that the 8-hour study can be used to quantitate
reflux accurately. An 8-hour outpatient protocol was developed and applied
to 25 healthy volunteers to determine the normal range of values. From
this, a simplified scoring system was created for assessing the results of
8-hour pH studies.
