Gastro-esophageal reflux disease symptoms and demographic factors as a pre-screening tool for barretts esophagus

Background: Barrett’s esophagus (BE) occurs as consequence of reflux and is a risk factor for esophageal adenocarcinoma. The current ‘‘gold-standard’ ’ for diagnosing BE is endoscopy which remains prohibitively expensive and impractical as a population screening tool. We aimed to develop a pre-screening tool to aid decision making for diagnostic referrals. Methodology/Principal Findings: A prospective (training) cohort of 1603 patients attending for endoscopy was used for identification of risk factors to develop a risk prediction model. Factors associated with BE in the univariate analysis were selected to develop prediction models that were validated in an independent, external cohort of 477 non-BE patients referred for endoscopy with symptoms of reflux or dyspepsia. Two prediction models were developed separately for columnar lined epithelium (CLE) of any length and using a stricter definition of intestinal metaplasia (IM) with segments $2 cm with areas under the ROC curves (AUC) of 0.72 (95%CI: 0.67–0.77) and 0.81 (95%CI: 0.76–0.86), respectively. The two prediction models included demographics (age, sex), symptoms (heartburn, acid reflux, chest pain, abdominal pain) and medication for ‘‘stomach’ ’ symptoms. These two models were validated in the independent cohort with AUCs of 0.61 (95%CI: 0.54–0.68) and 0.64 (95%CI: 0.52–0.77) for CLE and IM$2 cm, respectively. Conclusions: We have identified and validated two prediction models for CLE and IM$2 cm. Both models have fair prediction accuracies and can select out around 20 % of individuals unlikely to benefit from investigation for Barrett’