Does intraesophageal bougie use prevent post-operative dysphagia in laparoscopic nissen fundoplication? victoria martine ; mohammad kalantar ; spyridon giannopoulos ; dimitrios stefanidis 1: department of surgery, indiana university school of medicine, indianapolis, in, united states background : it is yet unknown what contributes to the variable degrees of post-operative dysphagia following a laparoscopic nissen fundoplication (lnf). previous studies have not found a contributing factor to post-operative dysphagia. this study reviews the effect of procedure practices, especially bougie device use, that could be possible contributors to post- operative dysphagia. methods : a retrospective study was conducted of patients who had undergone lnf procedures from 2012 – 2014. all demographic and procedure characteristics were recorded and compared between groups with bougie (wb) and without bougie (wob). association of all available factors with any post-operative dysphagia were evaluated using univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis. results : a total of 127 patients (89 female) were operated on by 4 surgeons. a bougie device was used in 99 (78%) cases, and 38 (30%) patients experienced some degree of post-operative dysphagia. there was no significant difference between wb and wob groups demographically. wob cases tended to have a longer operative time (134.3 min ± 43.6 vs 95.8 min ± 46.3; p<0.001) and estimated blood loss (47.5 ml, (95%ci:28 - 68) vs 24 ml (95%ci: 19 - 29, p=0.001). post-operative dysphagia was not associated with use of bougie device (or=0.99 (0.38-3.44), p=0.81). the success rate of the dilation procedure was not associated with prior utilization of bougie in the primary surgery (or= 0.9, 95% ci: 0.12-6.5). conclusions : use of bougie was correlated with shorter operative time and less bleeding; however, post-operative dysphagia does not appear to be associated with its use in laparoscopic nissen fundoplication. data analysis did not suggest any other contributors to post-operative dysphagia. further studies with larger number of surgeons are suggested in order to evaluate the effect of surgeon experience on outcomes