Copyright
©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2015; 21(19): 5762-5767
Published online May 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i19.5762
Published online May 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i19.5762
Changes in the esophageal mucosa of patients with non erosive reflux disease: How far have we gone?
Christos Triantos, Nikolaos Koukias, Konstantinos Thomopoulos, Department of Gastroenterology, University Hospital of Patras, 26504 Patras, Greece
Georgios Karamanolis, Gastroenterology Unit, 2nd Department of Surgery, “Aretaieio” University Hospital, Athens University, 11528 Athens, Greece
Author contributions: Triantos C conceptualized and designed this editorial; Triantos C and Koukias N reviewed the literature and wrote the manuscript; Karamanolis G and Thomopoulos K reviewed the manuscript critically for important intellectual content; all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Christos Triantos, MD, Department of Gastroenterology, University Hospital of Patras, Stamatopoulou 4, Rio, 26504 Patras, Greece. chtriantos@hotmail.com
Telephone: +30-697-2894651 Fax: +30-261-0625382
Received: November 27, 2014
Peer-review started: November 28, 2014
First decision: February 10, 2015
Revised: March 13, 2015
Accepted: April 17, 2015
Article in press: April 17, 2015
Published online: May 21, 2015
Peer-review started: November 28, 2014
First decision: February 10, 2015
Revised: March 13, 2015
Accepted: April 17, 2015
Article in press: April 17, 2015
Published online: May 21, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: The normal esophageal mucosa creates a protective epithelial barrier that might be impaired in patients with non erosive reflux disease (NERD). Whereas endoscopy and pH monitoring are the most important diagnostic tools in the diagnosis of NERD, recent studies suggest that esophageal biopsies might have a complementary role. Particularly in the differential diagnosis between NERD and functional heartburn, the application of histological severity scores showed very promising results. Further evaluation of the scores could lead to routine application of histology in specific NERD populations.