MedWire News: More than a quarter of patients with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease experience swallowing difficulties, called dysphagia, German researchers have found.

Swallowing difficulties among reflux patients should always be investigated by a doctor, as they could be an early sign of oesophageal cancer, warn lead researcher Dr Elfriede Bollschweiler, from the University of Cologne, and colleagues.

The researchers surveyed 268 randomly selected residents of Cologne in Germany, aged an average of 56 years, about reflux symptoms and swallowing problems.

In total, 34% of the participants reported that they suffered from reflux symptoms such as heartburn. Of these, 25% reported experiencing reflux symptoms more than twice a week.

The team found that people who reported reflux symptoms were significantly more likely to suffer from swallowing problems than other participants. Indeed, dysphagia affected 28% of participants with reflux symptoms, compared with just 3% of those without such symptoms.

Further analysis showed that swallowing problems were significantly related to the severity of reflux symptoms. For example, 65% of people with moderate-to-severe reflux symptoms reported swallowing difficulties compared with just 16% of those with mild reflux symptoms.

"In this study more than one fourth of patients with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease also had complaints of dysphagia," Dr Bollschweiler and team write in the journal Dysphagia.

They add: "All occurrences of dysphagia should be investigated by a physician. In countries with an increasing incidence of adenocarcinonoma [cancer] of the oesophagus, these results are of great importance."