A Comparison of Five Maintenance Therapies for Reflux Esophagitis

Background Patients with reflux esophagitis have a high rate of relapse within one year after therapy is discontinued. Methods We enrolled 175 adults with endoscopy-confirmed reflux esophagitis in a prospective study comparing five maintenance therapies. All the patients were initially treated with omeprazole (40 mg orally once a day) for four to eight weeks, and healing was confirmed by endoscopy. Participants were then stratified according to their initial grade of esophagitis and randomly assigned to 12 months of treatment with one of the following: cisapride (10 mg three times a day), ranitidine (150 mg three times a day), omeprazole (20 mg per day), ranitidine plus cisapride, or omeprazole plus cisapride. Endoscopy was repeated after 6 and 12 months of treatment; the endoscopists were blinded to the treatment assignments. Remission was defined as the absence of esophageal lesions on scheduled or unscheduled follow-up endoscopy. Results In an intention-to-treat analysis, the numbers of patients in con...