Diagnosis of oesophageal motility disorders has been well established for many years now, although circadian gastrointestinal motility is still purely understood. So far, high-resolution manometry (HRM) is only available for short-term measurement in clinical practice to evaluate simultaneous pressure conditions throughout the esophagus. Thus, only a very limited period of time can be investigated. There is evidence that disorders in esophageal motility can cause severe discomfort and symptoms even though they only tend to occur spontaneously. When performing short-term-measurements, these often cannot be detected. Therefore, one can assume that long-term analysis of the esophageal function will provide valuable new insights, which will contribute to more effective medicamenteous and operative treatment in esophageal motility disorders. At our gastrointestinal functional diagnostic laboratory, it has been possible to perform high-resolution manometry over the period of 24 hours since June 2014. We used a manometric probe consisting of 36 pressure sensors which are connected to a mobile recording device for ambulatory measurement. This article describes our experiences in clinical use when performing long-term high-resolution manometry and discusses usability and relevance of the results in the context of the underlying esophageal motility disorder.
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