Published in:
01-08-2010
Preoperative Predictors of Significant Symptomatic Response After 1 Year of Gastric Electrical Stimulation for Gastroparesis
Published in: World Journal of Surgery | Issue 8/2010
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Background
In cases of gastroparesis where significant symptoms fail to respond to standard medical therapy, gastric electrical stimulation (GES) may be of benefit. Unfortunately, not all patients improve with this therapy. Reliable preoperative predictors of symptomatic response to GES may allow clinicians to offer this expensive and invasive treatment to only those patients most likely to benefit.
Methods
Therapy was initiated in 15 patients more than 12 months prior to this retrospective review of our prospectively maintained data. All patients completed a Total Symptom Score (TSS) survey at every encounter as well as the SF-36 quality-of-life instrument prior to surgery. A failure of GES therapy was considered to have occurred when after 1 year of treatment, preoperative TSS had not decreased by at least 20%.
Results
Four patients (4 idiopathic) failed to improve more than 20% on multiple assessments after a year of therapy. All diabetic patients experienced a durable symptomatic improvement with GES. Review of individual items of the TSS revealed that nonresponders experienced less severe vomiting preoperatively.
Conclusions
Diabetic gastroparesis patients respond best to GES. Responders tend to have more severe vomiting preoperatively. Patients with idiopathic gastroparesis who do not experience severe vomiting should be cautioned about a potentially higher rate of poor response to GES and may be better served with alternative treatments.