Usefulness of Upper Gastrointestinal Symptoms as a Driver to Prescribe Gastroscopy in Obese Patients Candidate to Bariatric Surgery. A Prospective Study

Before bariatric surgery, the necessity of routine upper gastrointestinal endoscopy is controversial, and guidelines recommend endoscopy in symptomatic cases. However, impaired visceral sensation occurring in obese patients may be misleading. The purpose of the study is to evaluate prospectively the prevalence of gastrointestinal symptoms, endoscopic findings, and the relation between symptoms and endoscopic findings in obese patients before surgery. One hundred forty-two consecutive patients candidate to primary bariatric surgery filled out the validated Rome III symptomatic questionnaire and performed endoscopy. With a median age of 41 years and BMI of 44 Kg/m(2), 83 % were females. Symptoms were referred by 43 % of patients: gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) (27.9 %) and dyspepsia (24.6 %), subdivided in postprandial distress (PDS) (66.7 %) and epigastric pain (33.3 %) syndromes. Of GERD patients, 19.7 % presented concomitantly PDS. Belching was present in 8.2 % and nausea and/or vomiting in 1.6 % of patients. At endoscopy, one or more lesions were present in 47.1 % of the patients: erosive esophagitis (5.6 %), hiatal hernia (23.2 %), gastroduodenal erosions (6.3 %), and peptic ulcers (3.5 %). At histology, 24 % of patients have Helicobacter pylori infection, and its prevalence in gastroduodenal erosions and ulcers was 22.2 and 60 %, respectively. Surprisingly, in patients with peptic lesions H. pylori-negative, no chronic use of NSAIDs was reported. Analyzing the coexistence of symptoms and lesions, these resulted equally distributed beyond the presence of symptoms, being present in 44.2 and 49.4 % of symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, respectively. The presence of symptoms cannot be considered as a valuable guide to indicate endoscopy since the majority of endoscopic lesions were asymptomatic and not H. pylori-related.