Weighing in on the Results
“Overall, their study design looks sound,” said Mahyar Etminan, PharmD, associate professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an author of the JAMA study. He agreed that Dr. Liu’s research confirmed their findings about gastroparesis and biliary disease.
However, “I interpret the results with intestinal obstruction and pancreatitis as more inconclusive than no risk,” he added.
Session co-moderator and gastroenterologist and motility specialist with Stanford Health Care in California, Linda Anh Bui Nguyen, MD, AGAF, said that she thinks “it’s a promising study.
“But with any retrospective study where you’re looking at ICD-10 [International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision] codes, it really depends on the coders. The code could be subjective and could be wrong,” said Dr. Nguyen, clinical professor of medicine at Stanford Medical School, California.
For example, the diagnosis of gastroparesis requires a normal endoscopy and a gastric emptying test. “But we find that, frequently, patients are being given a diagnosis of gastroparesis without the test,” she said.
An unanswered question also remains regarding how pancreatitis or biliary disease is being diagnosed: “Was it imaging, lab testing, or symptoms?” she said in an interview. “For example, if patients had pain on the right side, did they call it biliary?”
Dr. Nguyen added that it is difficult to get this kind of detail in retrospective studies. She also agreed with Dr. Liu that prospective studies are warranted.
The study was independently supported. Dr. Liu, Dr. Etminan, and Dr. Nguyen had no relevant financial disclosures.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.