The Use of Breath Test for the Assessment of Gastric Emptying Rate in Clinical Practice

Dyspeptic symptoms such as early satiation, postprandial fullness, and nausea or epigastric pain are very common in the general population. These symptoms are classically attributed to gastrointestinal dismotility, and are commonly seen in functional dyspepsia and in diabetes. In a subset of patients the pathogenesis of dyspeptic symptoms is attributed to a delayed gastric emptying rate. There are several techniques used to assess the gastric emptying rate. In this paper we presented our experience in the assessment of gastric emptying rate using a non-invasive and non-radioactive method, the 13C labeled-octanoic acid breath test. First we described the technique and the parameters returned by the system. In the end we discussed several cases of symptomatic patients, with diabetes mellitus and functional dyspepsia. The dyspeptic symptoms are not very specific, and gastric emptying proves to be normal quite often, suggesting that other mechanisms are involved in the pathogenesis of the symptoms. Gastric emptying tests should be performed before initiating treatment with prokinetics. In this context, the breath test is an easy method to assess the gastric emptying rate.