Response to: correspondence on ‘Revisiting the role of sphincterotomy in sphincter of Oddi disorder: a critical appraisal of the RESPOnD study’ by Zeng

Abstract

Thanks to Dr Zeng for his insightful comments1 about our recent publication on 12-month outcomes of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) for sphincterotomy for sphincter of Oddi disorders (SOD).2 Many of the comments were addressed in the discussion of the paper, especially the significance of the unmeasured placebo response and greater importance of patient characteristics such as somatisation and opioid exposure compared with physician-defined factors like a dilated duct. We disagree that RESPOnD’s heterogeneous patient population reduces the study’s generalisability. RESPOnD subjects represent the full spectrum of SOD subtypes and thus have lower selection bias compared with more stringent enrolment criteria. For example, restricting subjects …