Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies subsidiary Ethicon's Linx Reflux Management System was "significantly more effective" at treating gastrointestinal reflux disease than acid suppression drugs.
The Linx Reflux Management System is a small band of magnetic beads wrapped around the esophagus that treats GERD.
Here's what you should know:
1. Researchers conducted a study with 152 patients, which was published in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. About 102 received twice-daily proton pump inhibitors and 50 received laparoscopic magnetic sphincter augmentation with the Linx system.
2. Eighty-nine percent of the Linx cohort achieved relief from moderate to severe regurgitation, compared to only 10 percent of the PPI cohort.
3. Eighty-one percent of the Linx cohort reported improvement of 50 percent or more in GERD quality scores, compared to 8 percent of the PPI cohort.
4. Ninety-one percent of the Linx cohort experienced a normal amount of reflux episodes at six months, compared to 58 percent of the PPI cohort.
5. The Linx cohort also had a greater patient satisfaction (81 percent) than the PPI cohort (2 percent).
Study co-author Reginald C. W. Bell, MD, said in a press release, "This study demonstrated that patients experiencing regurgitation despite proton-pump inhibitor therapy actually did extremely well with an anti-reflux procedure, magnetic sphincter augmentation, using the Linx device."