Improving surveillance for Barrett's oesophagus: Better to be looked over than be overlooked

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7556.1511-c

BMJ 2006;332:1511-1512 (24 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7556.1511-c

Letter

Improving surveillance for Barrett's oesophagus

Better to be looked over than be overlooked

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The audit by Bampton et al highlights the practicalproblems encountered in the area of Barrett's oesophagus surveillance.¹Our retrospective audit of 441 patients with Barrett's oesophagusin a university teaching hospital setting showed an alarminglylow compliance rate of 8.6%.² The main area of concern was thatquadrantic biopsies were not taken in a large proportion ofpatients. Similar figures were seen in an audit in United States,where the compliance rates varied from 14% to 38% in a patientpopulation from both teaching hospitals and community centres.³As seen by Bampton et al, the prospective audit in our centreafter guidelines were disseminated among endoscopists showedimproved compliance only to 61%. The main reasons for lack ofcompliance continues to be the lack of dedicated endoscopy listswith extended time allocation and the ongoing debate betweenbelievers and non-believers of a surveillance strategy in Barrett's.

Credit: . . . [Full text of this article]

Shaji Sebastian, consultant gastroenterologist

Hull Royal Infirmary, Hull HU3 2JZ shaji.sebastian@hey.nhs.uk

Colm O'Morain, head

Department of Gastroenterology, Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Dublin 24, Republic of Ireland

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