Endoscopic or Surgical Myotomy in Patients With Idiopathic Achalasia

A medium-size RCT on the growing research question of efficacy of peroral myotomy for achalasia, with a 17% failure to improve symptoms in the peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) arm, is discussed in this article. It recognizes a quite sobering incidence of endoscopically-evidenced reflux esophagitis in both arms, bafflingly improving between 3 and 24 months in the POEM group and increasing in the controls (Dor), while the incidence in the POEM arm was double!