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From: CKP
Remote Name: 128.227.206.89
Date: 04/15/02
Time: 09:01:46 PM
It's really an apples versus oranges thing to look at long term results.
The laparoscopic version has only been in the U.S. since 1993. It was only in the mid-1990s that they realized that response to PPIs was predictive of success, so the patient selection procedures have changed since then. In 1999, the American College of Gastroenterology came out with new treatment guidelines stating that surgery was a "maintenance option" for patients, which meant that more insurance companies would cover it. In 1998, only 10,000 were done in the country. In 1999, only 20,000. Nowadays it is more than 60,000 per year. But you can really only find data going back about 5 years that includes surgical techniques and patient selection that is comparable to what a patient is looking at today.