Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 28, 2016; 22(20): 4918-4925
Published online May 28, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i20.4918
Efficacy of peroral endoscopic myotomy vs other achalasia treatments in improving esophageal function
Madhusudhan R Sanaka, Umar Hayat, Prashanthi N Thota, Ramprasad Jegadeesan, Monica Ray, Scott L Gabbard, Neha Wadhwa, Rocio Lopez, Mark E Baker, Sudish Murthy, Siva Raja
Madhusudhan R Sanaka, Umar Hayat, Prashanthi N Thota, Ramprasad Jegadeesan, Monica Ray, Scott L Gabbard, Neha Wadhwa, Rocio Lopez, Department of Gastroenterology, Q3 Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195, United States
Mark E Baker, Department of Radiology, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195, United States
Sudish Murthy, Siva Raja, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH 44195, United States
Author contributions: Sanaka MR designed the study, acquired data and wrote the manuscript; Hayat U, Thota PN, Jegadeesan R, Ray M, Gabbard SL, Wadhwa N, Baker ME, Murthy S and Raja S contributed equally to the study, acquired the data and reviewed the manuscript; Lopez R designed the study, analyzed the data and reviewed the manuscript; All authors approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by Cleveland Clinic Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: All patients provided written informed consent prior to their treatments.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts of interest to report.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Madhusudhan R Sanaka, MD, FACG, FASGE, Department of Gastroenterology, Q3 Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH 44195, United States. sanakam@ccf.org
Telephone: +1-216-4443423 Fax: +1-216-4446284
Received: February 14, 2016
Peer-review started: February 14, 2016
First decision: March 21, 2016
Revised: March 26, 2016
Accepted: April 7, 2016
Article in press: April 7, 2016
Published online: May 28, 2016
Abstract

AIM: To assess and compare the esophageal function after peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) vs other conventional treatments in achalasia.

METHODS: Chart review of all achalasia patients who underwent POEM, laparoscopic Heller myotomy (LHM) or pneumatic dilation (PD) at our institution between January 2012 and March 2015 was performed. Patient demographics, type of achalasia, prior treatments, pre- and post-treatment timed barium swallow (TBE) and high-resolution esophageal manometry (HREM) findings were compared between the three treatment groups. Patients who had both pre- and 2 mo post-treatment TBE or HREM were included in the final analysis. TBE parameters compared were barium column height, width and volume of barium remaining at 1 and 5 min. HREM parameters compared were basal lower esophageal sphincter (LES) pressures and LES-integrated relaxation pressures (IRP). Data are presented as mean ± SD, median [25th, 75th percentiles] or frequency (percent). Analysis of variance, Kruskal-Wallis test, Pearsons χ2 test and Fishers Exact tests were used for analysis.

RESULTS: A total of 200 achalasia patients were included of which 36 underwent POEM, 22 underwent PD and 142 underwent LHM. POEM patients were older (55.4 ± 16.8 years vs 46.5 ± 15.7 years, P = 0.013) and had higher BMI than LHM (29.1 ± 5.9 kg/m2vs 26 ± 5.1 kg/m2, P = 0.012). More number of patients in POEM and PD groups had undergone prior treatments compared to LHM group (72.2% vs 68.2% vs 44.3% respectively, P = 0.003). At 2 mo post-treatment, all TBE parameters including barium column height, width and volume remaining at 1 and 5 min improved significantly in all three treatment groups (P = 0.01 to P < 0.001) except the column height at 1 min in PD group (P = 0.11) . At 2 mo post-treatment, there was significant improvement in basal LES pressure and LES-IRP in both LHM (40.5 mmHg vs 14.5 mmHg and 24 mmHg vs 7.1 mmHg respectively, P < 0.001) and POEM groups (38.7 mmHg vs 11.4 mmHg and 23.6 mmHg vs 6.6 mmHg respectively, P < 0.001). However, when the efficacy of three treatments were compared to each other in terms of improvement in TBE or HREM parameters at 2 mo, there was no significant difference (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION: POEM, PD and LHM were all effective in improving esophageal function in achalasia at short-term. There was no difference in efficacy between the three treatments.

Keywords: Achalasia, Dysphagia, Heller myotomy, Peroral endoscopic myotomy, Manometry, Pneumatic dilation

Core tip: This study evaluated and compared the efficacy of peroral endoscopic myotomy with laparoscopic Heller myotomy and pneumatic dilation in improving esophageal function in achalasia. Esophageal function was objectively assessed by timed barium esophagram and high resolution manometry at 2 mo follow-up. The results demonstrate that all three treatment modalities are effective in improving esophageal function at short term follow-up and there was no difference in efficacy between the three treatment modalities.