Gastroesophageal Reflux and Barrett’s Esophagus

Hall, Nigel, Pierro, Agostino and Chowdhury, Moti (2004) Gastroesophageal Reflux and Barrett’s Esophagus. In, Esposito, Ciro, Montupet, Philippe and Rothenberg, Steven (eds.) The Gastroesophageal Reflux in Infants and Children: Diagnosis, Medical Therapy, Surgical Management. Berlin. Springer Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 61-79. (0.1007/978-3-642-18906-7_9).

Abstract

In 1950, Norman Rupert Barrett, an Australian-born thoracic surgeon (Fig. 1; 1903–1979), described ulcers in the lower esophagus, previously attributed to gastroesophageal reflux (GER) by Allison [3], as in fact “chronic peptic ulcers“ within an intrathoracic stomach assuming a tubular form secondary to a “short esophagus“ [10]. Three years later it was Allison [4] that corrected Barrett’s misinterpretation and described the condition as we now understand it, namely columnar metaplasia replacing the normally squamous epithelium of the esophagus, and termed this “Barrett’s Esophagus.“ Over the last 50 years this definition of Barrett’s esophagus (BE) has continued to evolve, and in spite of his original erroneous description, to this day the condition remains eponymous to Norman Barrett. We describe the advances that have been made over these 50 years that have contributed to our understanding of the pathophysiology and management of this very difficult condition in adults and then focus on aspects of the disease specific to the pediatric population.

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Contributors

Author: Nigel Hall

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