The Italian validation of the Montreal Global definition and classification of gastroesophageal reflux disease

Abstract

Background and aims: Recently, a Global definition and a classification of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) were developed by Montreal Consensus Group, composed of international expert gastroenterologists. Guidelines and consensus documents are, however, infrequently accepted and adopted at a local level. The aim of this study was to measure the acceptance of Montreal Global definition of GERD consensus document by specialists in a single country (Italy) and to measure the linguistic, scientific, and practical differences between the international consensus document and the Italian version.

Methods: A 2-day meeting was held in June 2007 in Rome, Italy, attended by 147 Italian physicians who were experts in gastroenterology. They reviewed the individual original statements in their Italian translation and then voted on the statement using the scoring system used by the Montreal Consensus Group (6-point Likert scale). Voting was performed at baseline and after an analytical discussion on each statement, led by six internationally renowned experts. Consensus was defined as an agreement with a statement by at least two-thirds of the group. Results were compared with the Montreal statements.

Results and discussion: The level of consensus was already extremely high at the first vote (>90% with the two-thirds threshold). The level of agreement at the second vote increased slightly. The maximum variation between two votes was 33% (of increase from first to second round, 59-92%). The high level of agreement could be because of both the general acceptance of Montreal Consensus by scientific community, and the new scientific evidences published after the Montreal report, which fit with the original statements.

Conclusion: This study is the first national linguistic validation of the Montreal Global definition of GERD and is also proof of its scientific validity, based on the same methodology used to create the Montreal statements. It also suggests that evidence-based International disease classification systems can be applied to local settings after validation by local experts.