Esomeprazole in the treatment of patients with heartburn and other upper gastrointestinal symptoms, referred to primary care -- results of the in-practice evaluation program in Romania.

Background and Aim: The real-life clinical setting has been known to provide, sometimes, results different from controlled study outcomes. IPEP (InPractice Evaluation Program) was designed to evaluate the efficacy of esomeprazole in providing symptom relief in patients with reflux disease who present to primary care physicians for heartburn and symptoms that are poorly controlled by other drugs, thus testing the efficacy of the drug in day-to-day practice.
Methods: 119 primary care physicians and 22 internal medicine specialists, widely distributed geographically, participated in the program. The frequency and severity of three symptoms (heartburn, acid regurgitation and upper abdominal pain) were assessed before and at the end of one month treatment with esomeprazole 40 mg once daily.
Results: Follow-up data from 747 patients enrolled in IPEP was available to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention. Over 80% of the enrolled patients reported a decrease in the frequency of symptoms to less than one episode per week for all the three major symptoms (heartburn, acid regurgitation and upper abdominal pain). Regarding the severity of symptoms, 50-60% of the patients reported total relief, while 30-40% reported persistence of symptoms, but admitted them to be milder and with lower frequency. At the end of treatment, no patient reported severe or extremely severe symptoms.
Conclusions: The results of this routine clinical practice program are consistent with data reported in controlled trials indicating the efficacy of esomeprazole even in patients with upper gastrointestinal symptoms "refractory" to treatments prescribed by primary care practitioners.