Esophageal Motility and Psychiatric Factors in Functional Dyspepsia Patients with or Without Pain

Subtypes of functional dyspepsia (FD), includingrefluxlike dyspepsia, ulcerlike dyspepsia,dysmotility-like dyspepsia, and nonspecific dyspepsia,have been described and are widely used clinically.However, these symptom patterns often overlap, and theterms are insufficient for indicating all FD symptoms.In this study, we divided 71 FD patients into twogroups: patients with or without pain. Group I, the pain dyspepsia group, included patients in whomthe main symptoms were epigastralgia and/or chest pain.Group II, the painless dyspepsia group, includedpatients without pain, in whom the symptoms were nausea, vomiting, and heartburn. We examinedthe relationship between esophageal function andpsychiatric factors in the test groups and compared themwith a control group. Of the FD patients, 19.7% [8 (25%) of 32 group I patients, 6 (15.4%) of 39group II patients] had esophageal motility disorders,such as nutcracker esophagus and diffuse esophagealspasm. The LES pressure of group I was higher than that of group II by esophageal manometry (P< 0.05). In 17 (53.1%) of 32 group I patients and 31(79.5%) of 39 group II patients, psychiatric disorders(38.0% had depressive disorder and 21.1% had an anxiety disorder) were diagnosed followingDSM III-R criteria. Group II tended to be moredepressive than group I (P = 0.0508). Psychologicalassessment scores, STAI-I and STAI-II, were higher ingroups I and II than in the control group (P <0.001). Long-term distress, anxiety, and depression seemto influence the symptoms of FD patients. Esophagealdysmotility may be an important functional abnormality of FD.