Efficacy of cryotherapy as first line therapy in patients with Barrett's neoplasia: a systematic review and pooled analysis

Cryotherapy has been used as salvage therapy; however, its efficacy as first line treatment in patients with Barrett's esophagus (BE) neoplasia has not been well studied. The aim of this paper was to perform a systematic review to look at the efficacy of cryotherapy as the primary treatment of BE. An electronic database search was performed (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, and Google Scholar) to search for studies with cryotherapy as the initial primary modality of ablation in patients with BE neoplasia. Studies that included patients with other prior forms of therapy were excluded. The primary outcomes were the pooled rates of complete eradication of intestinal metaplasia (CE-IM) and CE of neoplasia (CE-N). Secondary outcomes were recurrence rates of neoplasia and intestinal metaplasia (IM) and adverse events. The statistical software OpenMetaAnalyst was used for analysis with pooled estimates reported as proportions (%) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) with heterogeneity (I2) among studies. The search revealed 6 eligible studies with a total of 282 patients (91.5% male, average age 65.3 years) with 459 person years of follow-up. 69.35% [95% CI (52.1%-86.5%)] of patients achieved CE-IM and 97.9% (95% CI: 95.5%-100%) had CE-N. 7.3% of patients had persistent dysplasia with 4% progressing to cancer. The recurrence rate of neoplasia was 10.4 and that of IM was 19.1 per 100 patient years of follow-up. The overall rate of stricture formation was 4.9%. There are scarce data on the use of cryotherapy as the primary modality for the treatment of BE dysplasia. The published data demonstrate efficacy rates of 69% and 98% for complete eradication of metaplasia and neoplasia, respectively. These results need to be assessed in prospective, comparative trials with other forms of therapy.

Methadone use and asymptomatic common bile duct dilation: Re-examining the link

Opiates have long been implicated in causing common bile duct (CBD) dilation but few studies have been done to look at the association between synthetic opiates - methadone - and asymptomatic CBD dilation. The mechanism by which methadone could cause CBD dilation is poorly understood, but it has been postulated that increase in biliary pressures from contraction of the sphincter of Oddi is likely. In the below article, we review all the evidence pertaining towards methadone causing common bile duct dilation.

Management of Barrett's esophagus with low-grade dysplasia

Barrett's esophagus progresses to esophageal adenocarcinoma in a stepwise histological fashion of no dysplasia, low grade dysplasia, high grade dysplasia and cancer. Hence the progression to cancer from various histological stages is different. Progression to cancer from low grade dysplasia is highly variable in the literature due to high inter-observer variability between pathologists in diagnosing it. Studies have shown the utility of having confirmation of low grade dysplasia by expert pathologists or documenting its persistence on two subsequent endoscopies in order to unify the diagnosis. The treatment of low grade dysplasia is variable. In this article we summarize the diagnosis, evaluation and management of low grade dysplasia in Barrett's Esophagus.