[Prevalence of gastro-esophageal reflux disease in patients who attended the emergency room].
Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a well-known important cause of non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP). It has been shown that in western countries this condition can be in 22-66% of the cases. However, this situation is unclear in Japanese hospitals. We performed this study to clarify the frequency of GERD in NCCP patients who attended the emergency room. We investigated the final diagnosis of the patients with chest pain who attended the emergency room of our hospital in March, June, September and December of 2005. Forty patients with NCCP attended the emergency room in the study periods. In these patients, only one patient (2.5%) was diagnosed as GERD. The results of this study showed that the frequency of GERD in NCCP patients of emergency room of Japan is lower than that of western countries.