A symptom scoring tool for identifying pediatric patients with eosinophilic esophagitis and correlating symptoms with inflammation.

BACKGROUND

Eosinophilic esophagitis (EE) is an increasingly recognized allergic disease entity that is difficult to distinguish clinically from other causes of esophagitis, especially gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). To our knowledge, there are no prospectively analyzed or validated symptom scoring tools for pediatric patients with EE and no prospective evaluation correlating symptoms with tissue inflammation.

OBJECTIVES

To prospectively analyze a symptom scoring tool's ability to distinguish pediatric patients with EE from those with GERD and from control patients with and without allergies and to correlate symptoms with tissue inflammation.

METHODS

A prospective study of a symptom scoring tool given to patients with EE (n = 35 not receiving EE targeted therapy), patients with GERD (n = 27 not undergoing acid suppression), allergic control patients (n = 24), and nonallergic control patients (n = 14) at an academic pediatric hospital. Histology and endoscopy scores were correlated with symptom complaints.

RESULTS

The total symptom score was higher among patients with EE (mean, 6.51; 95% confidence interval [CI], 5.50-7.53) and GERD (mean, 5.44; 95% CI, 4.64-6.25) than in allergic (mean, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.28-1.55) and nonallergic (mean, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.40-1.60) patients (P < .001). Patients with EE and GERD complained of more nausea/vomiting, abdominal pain, heartburn/regurgitation, and nocturnal awakening than control groups (P < .001). Only dysphagia (mean, 0.9 [95% CI, 0.7-1.2] in EE patients vs 0.4 [95% CI, 0.2-0.7] in GERD patients) and anorexia/early satiety (mean, 1.4 [95% CI, 1.2-1.6] in EE patients vs 0.8 [95% CI, 0.5-1.1] in GERD patients) discriminate EE from GERD (P < .01). These symptoms also correlated with the severity of histologic and endoscopic findings (P < .05).

CONCLUSION

Dysphagia and anorexia/early satiety identify pediatric patients with EE and correlate symptoms with tissue inflammation.