Esophageal impedance–pH monitoring

Abstract

Classical techniques like endoscopy and esophageal pH-metry are routinely used to study patients with symptoms related to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Although these techniques have been useful over the years both for diagnosis and therapeutic guidance, there are still many patients with typical or atypical GERD symptoms with normal endoscopy and pH-metry that do not respond adequately to antisecretory therapy. Ambulatory esophageal impedance-pH monitoring is a new technique that can be used to evaluate all types of gastroesophageal reflux, achieving higher rates of sensitivity and specificity than standard techniques. This review describes esophageal impedance-pH monitoring, summarizing the current literature on validation studies and clinical application.