Durability of per-oral endoscopic myotomy beyond 6 years.

Background and study aims  The aim of this study was to assess long-term clinical outcomes beyond 6 years in patients who underwent per-oral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) for the treatment of achalasia. Patients and methods  Patients with achalasia who underwent POEM between 2010 and 2012 and had follow-up of at least 6 years were retrospectively identified at eight tertiary care centers. The primary outcome evaluated was clinical success defined by an Eckardt symptom score (ESS) ≤ 3 for the duration of the follow-up period. The clinical success cohort was compared to failure (ESS > 3 at any time during follow-up) in order to identify characteristics associated with symptom relapse. The incidence of patient-reported gastroesophageal reflux (GER) was also evaluated. Results  Seventy-three patients with 6-year follow-up data were identified. Sustained clinical remission was noted in 89 % (65/73) at 6-years. Mean ESS decreased from 7.1 ± 2.3 pre-procedure to 1.1 ± 1.1 at 6 years ( P  < 0.001). Symptomatic reflux was reported by 27 of 72 patients (37.5 %). Type I achalasia (OR 10.8, P  = 0.04) was found to be associated with clinical failure on logistic regression analysis. Conclusions  In patients with achalasia, POEM provides high initial clinical success with excellent long-term outcomes. There are high rates of patient-reported gastroesophageal reflux post-procedure which persist at long-term follow-up.
Competing Interests: Competing interests Dr. N. Thosani is a consultant for Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Endogastric Solutions, and Pentax of America; a speaker for Abbvie, and receives royalties from UpToDate. Dr. M.A. Khashab is a consultant for Boston Scientific, Medtronic and Olympus. Dr. Alessandro Repici MD -Boston consulting fee, speaker fee, research grant. Fujifilm advisory board speaker fee. ERBE advisory board consulting fee. EndoKey advisory board. EndoStart advisory board. Medtronic research grant, consulting fee, advisory board. Dr. Sachin Wani is a Consultant for Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Cernostics and Interpace. Supported by the University of Colorado Department of Medicine Outstanding Early Scholars Program. All remaining authors declare they have nothing to disclose.
(The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).)