Abdominal and dyspeptic symptoms in patients with peptic ulcer treated medically or surgically

Abstract

Abstract Background Abdominal and dyspeptic complaints, which are prominent symptoms in patients with peptic ulceration, are commonly reported in the general population. There are few reports of follow-up study of peptic ulcer therapies in which clinical outcome has been compared with symptom reporting in community controls. Methods Three populations of patients with peptic ulcer disease (patients who had elective proximal gastric vagotomy (PGV), those having PGV for emergency indications and those receiving medical treatment with H2-receptor antagonists) were included in a questionnaire survey and compared with a group of randomly selected community controls. Results The vagotomized patients reported fewer abdominal complaints (P = 0·0003) and fewer dyspeptic complaints lasting for more than 1 week (P = 0·05) than those treated medically. There was no significant difference between vagotomized patients and community controls in the reporting of abdominal (P = 0·2) or dyspeptic (P = 0·9) complaints. Conclusion Taking abdominal complaints as the endpoint for former peptic ulcer treatment, surgical treatment with PGV seemed to be superior to therapy with H2-receptor antagonists and produced an almost identical level of complaints to that seen in the community population.