Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Jun 18, 2023; 13(4): 138-146
Published online Jun 18, 2023. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v13.i4.138
Pre-Lung transplant reflux testing demonstrates high prevalence of gastroesophageal reflux in cystic fibrosis and reduces chronic rejection risk
Wai-Kit Lo, Ryan Flanagan, Nirmal Sharma, Hilary J Goldberg, Walter W Chan
Wai-Kit Lo, Ryan Flanagan, Walter W Chan, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Nirmal Sharma, Hilary J Goldberg, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Author contributions: Chan WW and Lo WK initiated study concepts and design; Lo WK, Goldberg HJ, and Chan WW contributed to acquisition of data; Chan WW, Lo WK, Flanagan R, Goldberg HJ, and Sharma N performed analysis and interpretation of data; Lo WK, Flanagan R, and Chan WW drafted the manuscript; Chan WW, Lo WK, Flanagan R, Goldberg HJ, and Sharma N contributed to critical revision of manuscript for important intellectual content; Chan WW and Lo WK performed statistical analyses; and Chan WW provided administrative support and overall study supervision.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Mass General Brigham Healthcare Institutional Review Board (2011P001563).
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: Guidelines of the STROBE statement have been adopted for this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Walter W Chan, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA, 02115, United States. wwchan@bwh.harvard.edu
Received: November 20, 2022
Peer-review started: November 20, 2022
First decision: March 15, 2023
Revised: March 22, 2023
Accepted: March 31, 2023
Article in press: March 31, 2023
Published online: June 18, 2023
Processing time: 207 Days and 22.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This study found that objective evidence of gastroesophageal reflux disease was present in > 50% of lung transplant candidates with cystic fibrosis (CF). However, CF patients were less likely than those with other pulmonary diagnoses to undergo pre-transplantation reflux testing. CF patients who underwent objective reflux testing were less likely to develop chronic lung allograft dysfunction, as those tested positive were more likely to undergo anti-reflux surgery. Our findings provided evidence for the association of routine peri-transplant reflux testing with improved lung transplant outcomes in CF patients, and the importance of timely identification of reflux to allow early intervention.