Surgeons should be “very cautious” about performing fundoplication on gastrooesophageal reflux patients with atypical throat symptoms, but no heartburn or regurgitation, an Australian study warns.
The study authors, led by Dr Dharmendran Ratnasingam, from Flinders University in South Australia, found that in this subset of reflux patients less than 50% benefited from surgery.
They identified 93 patients with atypical throat symptoms of whom 27 had no typical reflux symptoms. A full work-up by an otorhinolaryngologist confirmed in all cases that the throat symptoms were reflux related. Cough was the commonest atypical symptom, followed by sore throat.
They compared outcomes in the patients with throat symptoms with versus without typical reflux symptoms and benchmarked them to a larger group of patients...
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