A Simplified Method of Esophageal pH Monitoring for Assessment of Gastroesophageal Reflux

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.