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Surgeons have long argued that surgical treatment reduces refluxate exposure to the esophagus better than medical therapy does; therefore, they reason that surgical treatment decreases risk for esophageal cancer. In this retrospective cohort study, researchers used several computerized national Veterans Affairs databases to compare risk for esophageal cancer in 946 patients who had undergone fundoplication for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), 1892 patients who had not undergone surgical treatment and were medically treated for GERD, and 5676 patients without GERD.
During 11,156 patient-years of follow-up, the fundoplication group developed eight new cases of esophageal cancer (72/100,000 patient-years). Similarly, during 20,115 patien…