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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Clinical Presentation of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease: A Prospective Study on Symptom Diversity and Modification of Questionnaire Application

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This is the peer-reviewed but unedited manuscript version of the following article: Broderik, R., Fuchs, K.-H., Breithaupt, W., Varga, G., Schulz, T., Babic, B., ... Horgan, S. (2019). Clinical Presentation of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease: A Prospective Study on Symptom Diversity and Modification of Questionnaire Application. Digestive Diseases. https://doi.org/10.1159/000502796. The final, published version is available at https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/502796. Introduction - Symptoms occurring in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) such as heartburn, regurgitation, thoracic pain, epigastric pain, respiratory symptoms, and others can show a broad overlap with symptoms from other foregut disorders. The goal of this study is the accurate assessment of symptom presentation in GERD. Methods - Patients with foregut symptoms were investigated for symptoms as well as endoscopy and gastrointestinal-functional studies for presence of GERD and symptom evaluation by standardized questionnaire. Questionnaire included a graded evaluation of foregut symptoms documenting severity and frequency of each symptom. The three types of questionnaires include study nurse solicitated, self-reported, and free-form self-reported by the patient. Results - For this analysis, 1,031 GERD patients (572 males and 459 females) were enrolled. Heartburn was the most frequently reported chief complaint, seen in 61% of patients. Heartburn and regurgitation are the most common (82.4/58.8%, respectively) in overall symptom prevalence. With regard to modification in questionnaire technique, if patients fill in responses without prompting, there is a trend toward more frequent documentation of respiratory symptoms (up to 54.5% [p p Conclusions - GERD symptoms are commonly heartburn and regurgitation, but overall symptom profile for patients may change depending on the type of questionnaire.