Utrasonographic Gastric Emptying in Patients with Functional Dyspepsia

Park, In Suh; Lee, Sang In; Kim, Ki Whang; Park, Hyo Jin; Lee, Hong Woo; Kang, Byung Chul

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Recently, ultrasonic gastric emptying has been introduced as a more safe and physiologic method to measure the functional abnormalities of the stomach. The present study assesses the ultrasonic gastric emptying of 23 patients with functional dyspepsia (FD) and compares the results with those of 6 healthy volunteers.
METHODS
Ultrasonic gastric emptying of a semi-liquid meal was evaluated via measurements of gastric antral area based on simultaneous epigastric longitudinal scan viewing of both the abdominal aorta and the superior mesenteric vein. The degree of symptom was the summation of the scales according to 7 types of subjective complaints.
RESULTS
T1/2 was 67.2+/-9.5 minutes of healthy volunteers, 73.6+/-29.0 minutes of the patients with FO. Eight patients with FD and significant delay of ultrasonographic gastric emptying presented fastmg antral area of 322.7+/-130.0 mm2, postprandial maximal antral area of 1,744.4+/-363.4 mm2, the ratio of maximal to fasting, 7.0+/-4.9. The score of symptoms for these patients revealed a statistically significant difference compared to the 15 FD subjects without the delay (p<0.05).
CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that the patients with FD and delayed ultrasonographic gastric emptying may be more frequently correlated with symptoms of motility-like dyspepsia. The ultrasonographic gastric emptying may be used in the eva]uation of motility diesase of the stomach in place of other available methods.