barium swallow

With different methods for diagnosing H. pylori infections; the aim of this study was to compare barium swallows radiographic findings and serological tests for diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection in dyspeptic patients. In this analytic cross-sectional study، 60 patients with documented gastric or duodenal ulcer، referring to Yasuj Shahid Mofateh Clinic No. 2 were randomly selected. For all patients، Serologic testing determining the Helicobacter pylori infection was performed using specific IgG antibody titer. Afterward، barium swallow radiograph was performed on all patients. The results of the diagnostic procedure was evaluated by the indices of sensitivity، specificity، positive predictive value، negative predictive value، the percentage of false positives، the percentage of false negative and true accuracy with 95% confidence interval were analyzed. From a total of 60 serological testing، 37 patients (61. 6 %) had positive and 23 (39. 4 percent) had negative results. Barium swallows radiography of 7 out of 60 patients (11. 7 percent) was positive. Among patients with positive serology، 5 patients had positive and 2 patients had negative results. Barium swallows sensitivity and specificity of serological tests was estimated 13. 5 and 91 percent respectively. According to the high specificity percent، barium swallow radiography method can be considered as a confirmatory method in the diagnosis of H. pylori infection.

Achalasia is a motility disorder of unknown etiology. Diagnostic techniques include Barium esophagram, simple and widely available, radionuclide transit/emptying scintigraphy, a low-cost procedures, easy to perform and widely available, well tolerated and require minimum cooperation by patients and esophageal manometry that continues to be used widely in clinical practices, primarily because of its perceived value. Aim of this study was to compare methods of manometry, barium swallow and scintigraphy before and after pneumatic dilation.Methods and Materials: 17 patients with achalasia of cardia were evaluated both symptomatically and objectively (esophageal manometry, timed barium esophagram, and scintigraphic emptying index) before treating them with pneumatic dilation and after. The degree of patient symptom improvement post therapy was recorded and correlated with improvement of three methods indices. The degree of improvement after treatment was determined as the percentage of reduction of symptoms, divided into two groups (1) <80% improvement; (2) success: ≥80% improvement. 12 (70.6%) of patients had score improvement of ≥80%. All the diagnostic indices were significantly different between pre and post therapy. But, there was not significant difference between two groups of symptom improvement for indices of barium swallow or scintigraphy and also any association or correlation between patient symptom score and barium height improvement or emptying index improvement. We yielded 70.6% short-term good result after PD, similar to other studies. Our results showed that transit or barium study should not be relied upon in isolation for assessment of the efficacy of treatment.