The Laryngoscope

Objectives/Hypothesis: To determine whether mea-surement of pepsin in throat sputum by immunoassay could be used as a sensitive and reliable method for detecting laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) compared with 24-hour double-probe (esophageal and pharyn-geal) pH monitoring. Study Design: Patients with clini-cal LPR undergoing pH monitoring provided throat sputum samples during the reflux-testing period for pepsin measurement using enzyme-linked immunoad-sorbent assay. Results: Pepsin assay results from 63 throat sputum samples obtained from 23 study subjects were comparedwith their pHmonitoringdata. Twenty-two percent (14/63) of the sputum samples correlated the presence of pepsinwith LPR (pH< 4 at the pharyn-geal probe), of which the median concentration of pep