Outcome of Infant Regurgitation Diagnosed by Rome Ⅳ Criteria

Background: Infant regurgitation is the most prevalent functional gastrointestinal disorder in infancy.Knowing the benign outcome of such condition helps to decrease the anxiety of parents and unnecessary prescriptions by physicians.Objectives: The aims of the current work were to detect the outcome of infant regurgitation among Egyptian infants diagnosed by Rome Ⅳ criteria and to detect its prevalence among the surveyed population.Patients and Methods: A prospective cohort study enrolling 280 healthy infants 1-4 months diagnosed as infant regurgitation according to Rome Ⅳcriteria by fulfilling a questionnaire and undergoing examination.Parents were reassured and educated then both were repeated after 3 months.According to the outcome, infants were divided into symptomatic infants, who were either partially improved or not-improved at all and asymptomatic infants who had stopped regurgitation.Results: The prevalence of regurgitation was 20.3% among the surveyed 1380 infants.On follow up 42.9% of infants became asymptomatic while 49.6% partially improved and only 7.5% didn't improve.Weight was properly gained for all patients except 3 who had failure to thrive, however that was not correlated with the outcome of regurgitation.Proton pump inhibitors were prescribed for 7.7% of cases, however, increasing age was the only predictor of total improvement after 3 months follow up with odds ratio=2.45 and confidence interval (1.57-3.84).Conclusion: Infant regurgitation diagnosed according to Rome Ⅳ criteria seems to be normal behavior in early infancy which resolves by time, just requiring parental , reassurance, and follow up, while no interventions are needed.