Long-term endoscopic surveillance of Barrett's esophagus

Conio et al. (1) have made an important contribution to the literature on the incidence of adenocarcinoma (AC) of the esophagus in patients with Barrett's esophagus (BE). One hundred fifty-five patients with BE were followed for a mean of 5.5 yr in this prospective study. Only one study, which was retrospective, has more patient-years of follow-up (2). The incidence of AC was 1/220 patient-years follow-up, or 0.45% per year. This finding is similar to those from recent studies, such as Drewitz et al. (3) and O'Connor et al. (4), as well as the Shaheen et al. funnel analysis (5).