Electrogastrogram Analysis in Children with Chronic Abdominal Pain

Objective: Electrogastrography (EGG) is a non-invasive method for the diagnosis of gastric electrical activity. This study used an EGG to analyze the gastric activity in children with Chronic Abdominal Pain (CAP). Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of patients with CAP who underwent EGG at the first affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University. Multichannel EGG with 8-minutes recordings preprandially and postprandially was done in children with CAP. Computerized spectral analysis methods were used to compute various EGG parameters. Results: Chronic superficial gastritis and Functional Dyspepsia (FD) were very common among 96 patients with CAP. The dominant power and waveform response area of EGG was significantly lower in FD patients and chronic superficial gastritis in both preprandial and postprandial states. DP, WRA and power ratio was obviously higher in patients with superficial gastritis, duodenitis and reflux esophagitis in their postprandial states. Conclusions: Gastric myoelectrical activity abnormalities were observed in CAP patients and different abnormality of EGG parameters was shown in different groups. EGG is an effective, reliable and non-invasive method in the diagnosis of CAP subgroups.