Upper Gastrointestinal Mucosal Damage and Subsequent Risk of Parkinson Disease.

Importance: The gut-first hypothesis of Parkinson disease (PD) has gained traction, yet potential inciting events triggering Parkinson pathology from gut-related factors remain unclear. While Helicobacter pylori infection is linked to mucosal damage (MD) and PD, it is unknown how upper gastrointestinal MD from any source increases PD risk. Objective: To evaluate any association between upper endoscopy findings of MD and subsequent clinical PD diagnosis. Design, Setting, and Participants: This was a retrospective cohort study of patients with no PD history undergoing upper endoscopy with biopsy between January 2000 and December 2005, with final follow-up assessments completed July 31, 2023. The study was conducted within the Mass General Brigham system, a multicenter network in the greater Boston, Massachusetts, area. Patients with MD were matched 1:3 to patients without MD based on age, sex, and date of initial endoscopy. Exposure: MD, defined as erosions, esophagitis, ulcers, or peptic injury, observed on upper endoscopy or pathology reports. Main Outcomes and Measures: The relative risk of PD given a history of MD, estimated using incident rate ratio (IRR) and multivariate Cox proportional hazard ratios (HRs). Results: Of 9350 patients, participants had a mean (SD) age of 52.3 (20.3) years; 5177 (55.4%) were male; and 269 (2.9%) were Asian, 737 (7.9%) Black, and 6888 (73.7%) White. Most participants underwent endoscopy between the ages of 50 and 64 years (2842 [30.4%]). At baseline, patients with MD were more likely to have a history of H pylori infection, proton-pump inhibitor use, chronic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug use, gastroesophageal reflux disease, smoking, constipation, and dysphagia. The mean (SD) follow-up time was 14.9 (6.9) years for the whole cohort, during which patients with MD were more likely to develop PD (IRR, 4.15; 95% CI, 2.89-5.97; P < .001) than those without MD, even after covariate adjustment (HR, 1.76; 95% CI 1.11-2.51; P = .01). Constipation, dysphagia, older age, and higher Charlson-Deyo Comorbidity Index were also associated with higher PD risk. Conclusions and Relevance: In this cohort study, a history of upper gastrointestinal MD was associated with elevated risk of developing a clinical PD diagnosis. Increased vigilance among patients with MD for future PD risk may be warranted.

[Upper gastro-intestinal tumour stenosis treated by a new endoscopic approach]. / Sténose digestive tumorale haute traitée par une nouvelle approche endoscopique.

Gastric outlet obstruction (GOO) is a mechanical obstruction of the distal stomach or proximal duodenum. Surgical gastro-jejunostomy and self-expanding metal duodenal stents were the conventional treatments for GOO. In recent years, a new treatment option emerged using echo-guided endoscopic gastroenterostomy (EUS-GE). It appears to be a safe and effective technique with a clinical success rate of 85-90 % and a side effect rate of less than 18 %. Compared to metal duodenal prostheses, the risk of recurrence of GOO and of re-intervention is lower with EUS-GE. The rate of side effects also appears to be lower than with the surgical technique, with a shorter length of hospital stay. Randomised studies comparing these different techniques are still needed to determine a new treatment algorithm for GOO. We report a case of successful EUS-GE performed at our institution.

La «gastric outlet obstruction¼ (GOO) est une obstruction mécanique de l'estomac distal ou du duodénum proximal. La gastro-jéjunostomie chirurgicale et les endoprothèses métalliques auto-expansibles duodénales étaient les traitements conventionnels de la GOO. Ces dernières années, une nouvelle option thérapeutique est apparue utilisant la gastro-entéro-anastomose par voie endoscopique écho-guidée (GE-EEG). Elle semble être une technique sûre et efficace avec un taux de succès clinique de 85 à 90 % et un taux d'effets secondaires de moins de 18 %. Comparé aux prothèses duodénales métalliques, le risque de récidive de la GOO et de réintervention est plus faible avec la GE-EEG. Le taux de manifestations indésirables semble également être plus faible qu'avec la technique chirurgicale, avec une durée de séjour hospitalier plus courte. Des études randomisées comparant ces différentes techniques sont encore nécessaires pour déterminer un nouvel algorithme de traitement pour la GOO. Nous rapportons un cas de GE-EEG réalisée avec succès dans notre institution.

Is it necessary to stop glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists prior to endoscopic procedure? A retrospective study.

BACKGROUND: Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA) are effective in diabetes and obesity, reducing hyperglycemia by increasing insulin release and delaying gastric emptying. However, they can cause gastroparesis, raising concerns about aspiration during procedures. Recent guidelines advise discontinuing GLP-1 RA before surgery to reduce the risk of pulmonary aspiration. AIM: To evaluate the effect of GLP-1 RAs on gastric residual contents during endoscopic procedures. METHODS: A retrospective chart review at BronxCare Health System, New York, from January 2019 to October 2023, assessed gastric residue and aspiration in GLP-1 RA patients undergoing endoscopic procedures. Two groups were compared based on dietary status before the procedure. Data included demographics, symptoms of gastroparesis, opiate use, hemoglobin A1c, GLP-1 agonist indication, endoscopic details, and aspiration occurrence. IBM SPSS was used for analysis, calculating means, standard deviations, and applying Pearson's chi-square and t-tests for associations, with P < 0.05 as being significant. RESULTS: During the study, 306 patients were included, with 41.2% on a clear liquid/low residue diet and 58.8% on a regular diet before endoscopy. Most patients (63.1%) were male, with a mean age of 60 ± 12 years. The majority (85.6%) were on GLP-1 RAs for diabetes, and 10.1% reported digestive symptoms before endoscopy. Among those on a clear liquid diet, 1.5% had residual food at endoscopy compared to 10% on a regular diet, which was statistically significant (P = 0.03). Out of 31 patients with digestive symptoms, 13% had residual food, all from the regular diet group (P = 0.130). No complications were reported during or after the procedures. CONCLUSION: The study reflects a significant rise in GLP-1 RA use for diabetes and obesity. A 24-hour liquid diet seems safe for endoscopic procedures without aspiration. Patients with upper gastrointestinal symptoms might have a higher residual food risk, though not statistically significant. Further research is needed to assess risks based on diabetes duration, gastroparesis, and GLP-1 RA dosing, aiming to minimize interruptions in therapy during procedures.

Effects of Cannabis Use on Sedation Requirements for Endoscopic Procedures: A Replication Study.

On July 1, 2021, cannabis became legal in Virginia for adults 21 years of age and older. Cannabis consumption may have significant implications for outcomes related to medical care, including procedural sedation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether self-reported cannabis consumption has any relationship to sedation medication requirements during endoscopic procedures. A retrospective analysis was conducted to examine two groups of surgical patients (self-reported cannabis use versus self-reported non-cannabis use) at a community hospital in the mid-Atlantic region. Results demonstrate that there were no significant differences between groups for either Time to Aldrete ≥8 (p = .486) or Time to Meet Phase II Criteria (p = .762). Equivalent recovery times for both groups may be an indicator that comparable sedation levels were maintained, despite the increased propofol requirements of the cannabis group. Open conversations to establish patient use of cannabis products prior to procedural sedation is important for determining appropriate plans of care related to risk factors and medication dosage requirements during endoscopic evaluations.

Yield of alarm features in predicting significant endoscopic findings among hospitalized patients with dyspepsia.

BACKGROUND: Dyspepsia is a very prevalent upper gastrointestinal tract symptoms complex. Some of these symptoms might arise from serious underlying diseases, so the promotion of evidence-based guidelines could potentially better align evaluation and treatment. AIM: To determine the value of alarm features as a predictive factor for significant endoscopic findings (SEFs) among hospitalized patients presenting with dyspepsia. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective case-control study including information about 6208 endoscopic procedures performed for hospitalized patients. Patients were divided into two groups, with and without SEFs, and compared to elucidate the ability of the different alarm features to predict SEFs. RESULTS: During the study, 605 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. When the demographics and clinical characteristics of the two groups were compared, tachycardia (P < 0.05), normocytic anemia, (P < 0.05), leukocytosis (P < 0.05), and hypoalbuminemia (P < 0.05) documented on admission prior to endoscopy were strong predictors of SEFs. Among the alarm features, upper gastrointestinal bleeding, persistent vomiting, odynophagia [odds ratio (OR) = 3.81, P < 0.05; OR = 1.75, P = 0.03; and OR = 7.81, P = 0.07, respectively] were associated with SEFs. Unexplained weight loss was strongly associated with malignancy as an endoscopic finding (OR = 2.05; P < 0.05). In addition, long-term use of anti-aggregate medications other than aspirin (P < 0.05) was correlated to SEFs. CONCLUSION: Novel predictors of SEFs were elucidated in this study. These parameters could be used as an adjunctive in decision making regarding performing upper endoscopy in hospitalized patients with dyspepsia.

Device-assisted enteroscopy: Are we ready to dismiss the spiral?

Motorized spiral enteroscopy (MSE) is the latest advance in device-assisted enteroscopy. Adverse events related to MSE were discussed in a recent large systematic review and meta-analysis and were directly compared with those of balloon enteroscopy in a case-matched study and a randomized controlled trial. Following the real-life application of MSE, an unexpected safety issue emerged regarding esophageal injury and the technique has been withdrawn from the global market, despite encouraging results in terms of diagnostic and therapeutic yield. We conducted an Italian multicenter real-life prospective study, which was prematurely terminated after the withdrawal of MSE from the market. The primary goals were the evaluation of MSE performance (both diagnostic and therapeutic) and its safety in routine endoscopic practice, particularly in the early phase of introduction in the endoscopic unit. A subanalysis, which involved patients who underwent MSE after unsuccessful balloon enteroscopy, demonstrated, for the first time, the promising performance of MSE as a rescue procedure. Given its remarkable performance in clinical practice and its potential role as a backup technique following a previously failed enteroscopy, it may be more appropriate to refine and enhance MSE in the future rather than completely abandoning it.

Foundation models in gastrointestinal endoscopic AI: Impact of architecture, pre-training approach and data efficiency.

Pre-training deep learning models with large data sets of natural images, such as ImageNet, has become the standard for endoscopic image analysis. This approach is generally superior to training from scratch, due to the scarcity of high-quality medical imagery and labels. However, it is still unknown whether the learned features on natural imagery provide an optimal starting point for the downstream medical endoscopic imaging tasks. Intuitively, pre-training with imagery closer to the target domain could lead to better-suited feature representations. This study evaluates whether leveraging in-domain pre-training in gastrointestinal endoscopic image analysis has potential benefits compared to pre-training on natural images. To this end, we present a dataset comprising of 5,014,174 gastrointestinal endoscopic images from eight different medical centers (GastroNet-5M), and exploit self-supervised learning with SimCLRv2, MoCov2 and DINO to learn relevant features for in-domain downstream tasks. The learned features are compared to features learned on natural images derived with multiple methods, and variable amounts of data and/or labels (e.g. Billion-scale semi-weakly supervised learning and supervised learning on ImageNet-21k). The effects of the evaluation is performed on five downstream data sets, particularly designed for a variety of gastrointestinal tasks, for example, GIANA for angiodyplsia detection and Kvasir-SEG for polyp segmentation. The findings indicate that self-supervised domain-specific pre-training, specifically using the DINO framework, results into better performing models compared to any supervised pre-training on natural images. On the ResNet50 and Vision-Transformer-small architectures, utilizing self-supervised in-domain pre-training with DINO leads to an average performance boost of 1.63% and 4.62%, respectively, on the downstream datasets. This improvement is measured against the best performance achieved through pre-training on natural images within any of the evaluated frameworks. Moreover, the in-domain pre-trained models also exhibit increased robustness against distortion perturbations (noise, contrast, blur, etc.), where the in-domain pre-trained ResNet50 and Vision-Transformer-small with DINO achieved on average 1.28% and 3.55% higher on the performance metrics, compared to the best performance found for pre-trained models on natural images. Overall, this study highlights the importance of in-domain pre-training for improving the generic nature, scalability and performance of deep learning for medical image analysis. The GastroNet-5M pre-trained weights are made publicly available in our repository: huggingface.co/tgwboers/GastroNet-5M_Pretrained_Weights.

Non-variceal Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding and Its Endoscopic Management.

Upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Clinical symptoms that patients may present with include: hematemesis, coffee-ground emesis, melena, and hematochezia. Clinical signs can range from tachycardia to shock. The anatomical landmark that differentiates upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeds from lower bleeds is the ligament of Treitz. The first steps of treating a patient who presents with signs of UGIB are resuscitation with appropriate fluids and blood products as necessary. The consideration of endoscopy and the urgency at which it should be performed is also vital during initial resuscitation. Endoscopic therapy should ideally be performed within 24 hours of presentation after initial stabilization with crystalloids and blood products. Intravenous proton pump inhibitors are the mainstay in the initial management of upper GI bleeding from a non-variceal etiology, and they should be administered in the acute setting to decrease the probability of high-risk stigmata seen during endoscopy. Pro-kinetic agents can be given 30 minutes to an hour before endoscopy and may aid in the diagnosis of UGIB. There are 3 broad categories of endoscopic management for UGIB: injection, thermal, and mechanical. Each endoscopic method can be used alone or in combination with others; however, the injection technique with epinephrine should always be used in conjunction with another method to increase the success of achieving hemostasis. In this review article, we will review the steps of triage and initial resuscitation in UGIB, causes of UGIB and their respective management, several endoscopic techniques and their effectiveness, and prognosis with a primary focus limited to non-variceal bleeding.

Emerging indications for third space endoscopy.

This chapter will explore the recent advancements and innovations in the field of third space endoscopy. The traditional principles of per-oral endoscopic myotomy and endoscopic submucosal dissection have been applied to offer solutions to traditionally difficult to manage problems including esophageal diverticula, post-fundoplication dysphagia, post-sleeve gastrectomy stricture, bariatric procedure and Hirschsprung disease. Typically, these problems were managed surgically with potentially high rates of morbidity and mortality; however, the principles of third space endoscopy offer a safer and less invasive option for management. All of these applications of third space endoscopy are less than a decade old with some emerging in the last 1-2 years. In this chapter, we will explore the pathophysiology of these diseases and how third space endoscopy can offer a solution. We will also review the relevant literature along with the safety and effectiveness of the proposed innovations.

Endoscopic removal of gastrointestinal lesions by using third space endoscopy techniques.

The concept of submucosal space, or rather the "third space", located between the intact mucosal flap and the muscularis propria layer of the gastrointestinal tract, represents a tunnel that the endoscopist could use to perform interventions in the muscularis propria layer or breech it to enter the mediastinum or the peritoneal cavity without full thickness perforation. The tunnel technique can be used both for the removal of mucosal tumours, called endoscopic submucosal tunnel dissection (ESTD), for the removal of subepithelial tumours (SELs), called submucosal tunnelling endoscopic resection (STER), and for the removal of extra-luminal lesions (for example in the mediastinum or in the rectum), called submucosal tunnelling endoscopic resection for extraluminal tumours (STER-ET). Aim of this updated narrative review, is to summarize the evidences that analyses indications, and outcomes of tunnelling techniques for the treatment of above mentioned lesions.

Navigating the learning landscape: Comprehensive training in third space endoscopy - training, techniques, and practical recommendations.

Third space endoscopy (TSE), including ESD, POEM, or STER are advanced procedures requiring precise endoscopic control and tissue recognition. Despite its increasing adoption, evidence-based curricula, and standardized training protocols for TSE are lacking. This review explores training methods, cognitive skills, and technical proficiency requirements for endoscopists performing TSE, with a primary emphasis on POEM. Generally, it seems wise to recommend a step-up approach to TSE training, starting with ex-vivo models or POEM simulators; mechanical and virtual reality (VR) simulators are commonly used during early training. Preclinical training involving ex-vivo and live animal models is suggested to prepare trainees for safe and effective procedures. Studies suggest varying numbers of procedures for training, with approximately 20-40 cases needed before a first plateau is achieved in terms of complications and speed. The duration of on-patient clinical training varies depending on prior experience. Mentorship programs, workshops, and case discussions may facilitate dynamic knowledge transfer. In addition, adverse event management is a crucial aspect of any TSE training program. Existing evidence supports the use of preclinical models and emphasizes the importance of specialized training programs for TSE in alignment with our proposed step-up training approach. This review outlines practical recommendations for the theoretical knowledge and technical skills required before commencing TSE training, covering clinical understanding, diagnostic and outcome assessment, procedural requirements, and the role of mentorship programs.

Limits of pre-endoscopic scoring systems in geriatric patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

Upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) is a common cause of hospital admission worldwide and several risk scores have been developed to predict clinically relevant outcomes. Despite the geriatric population being a high-risk group, age is often overlooked in the assessment of many risk scores. In this study we aimed to compare the predictive accuracy of six pre-endoscopic risk scoring systems in a geriatric population hospitalised with UGIB. We conducted a multi-center cross-sectional study and recruited 136 patients, 67 of these were 65-81.9 years old ("< 82 years"), 69 were 82-100 years old ("≥ 82 years"). We performed six pre-endoscopic risk scores very commonly used in clinical practice (i.e. Glasgow-Blatchford Bleeding and its modified version, T-score, MAP(ASH), Canada-United Kingdom-Adelaide, AIMS65) in both age cohorts and compared their accuracy in relevant outcomes predictions: 30-days mortality since hospitalization, a composite outcome (need of red blood transfusions, endoscopic treatment, rebleeding) and length of hospital stay. T-score showed a significantly worse performance in mortality prediction in the "≥ 82 years" group (AUROC 0.53, 95% CI 0.27-0.75) compared to "< 82 years" group (AUROC 0.88, 95% CI 0.77-0.99). In the composite outcome prediction, except for T-score, younger participants had higher sensitivities than those in the "≥ 82 years" group. All risk scores showed low performances in the prediction of length of stay (AUROCs ≤ 0.70), and, except for CANUKA score, there was a significant difference in terms of accuracy among age cohorts. Most used UGIB risk scores have a low accuracy in the prediction of clinically relevant outcomes in the geriatric population; hence novel scores should account for age or advanced age in their assessment.