276 Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease in Infant: Relationship Between Multichannel Intraluminal Impedanceph Monitoring and Clinical Outcome

Abstract

Background and aims: combined multichannel intraluminal impedance and pH-monitoring (MII/pH) is a new technique identifying refluxes irrespective of acidity and detecting their duration, proximal extent and pH. These features are important when studying gastroesophageal-reflux-disease (GERD) in infants, in which weakly acid refluxes are prevalent. Clinical application of MII/pH is uncommon yet, owing to lack of reference values and difficult interpretation of the variables obtained. Aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between MII-pH results and clinical outcome on a sample of GERD infants.

Methods: infants (age: 0-3 months) with GERD symptoms were studied with MII/pH and submitted to a follow-up consisting in clinical examinations and structured interviews to parents at 3-6-9-12-18-24-36 months to evaluate the presence of symptoms and the therapy effects.

Results: 54 patients completed the follow-up (32M; age 33.69±21.78 days; weight 3465.13±791.08 gr.; length 52.08±3.55 cm). 22 and 15 patients were still symptomatic at the age of 6 and 9 months, without difference in MII/pH values between symptomatic and non symptomatic infants. The 12 infants that were still symptomatic at the age of 12 months showed a higher bolus exposure index (BEI) with respect to the healed patients (2.63±1.72% vs 1.72±1.05; p=0.029).

Conclusions: MII-pH in first months of life could be useful to identify patients with high risk of presenting GER symptoms for more than 1 year. BEI is a pH independent variable with a significant relationship with symptoms duration. Our data highlight the clinical relevance of MII/pH-detected weakly acidic refluxes in GERD infant.

Log in or create a free account to read this content

Gain free access to this article, as well as selected content from this journal and more on nature.com

Access through your institution

or

Sign in or create an account

Continue with Google

Continue with ORCiD