History and Objectives: The high prevalence of non-ulcer dyspepsia controversy surrounding its treatment and the high costs of excessive use of medication led us to conduct this study on the effects of metoclopramide in patients with non-ulcer dyspepsia referred to Kashan’s Shaheed Beheshti hospital in 1995-96.

Materials and Methods: In this double blind clinical trial, cases were selected through continuous sampling. Patients with at least one symptom of epigastric pain, flatulence, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, regurgitation, bad breath, stomach fullness or belching for a duration of at least 3 months were included. Following a thorough physical exam, tests including a complete and differential blood count, serum sodium, potassium, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, alkaline phosphatase, SGOT, SGPT, calcium, phosphorus. Fasting blood sugar, creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, 3 successive stool exams, THS, T3RIA, T4RIA, abdominal sonography and electrocardiography were performed to exclude underlying diseases. Endoscopy was also performed to exclude organic gastrointestinal diseases and patients avoiding medications for the past 2 weeks were studied. Patients were randomly divided into two groups. Cases were given 10 milligrams of metoclopramide 4 times a day for 2 weeks, while the controls received placebo. Drug effects were measured based on the patient’s clinical improvement.

Results: 70 patients were thus studied 37 were male and 33 female. Age mean and standard deviation were 29.1±9.1 years in the controls and 30.1±8.1 years in the cases, with no statistically significant difference. Complete or relative improvement rate was 82.9% in the controls (17.1% complete and 65.8% relative) and 100% in the cases (25.7% complete and 74.3% relative).

Conclusion: We therefore conclude that metoclopramide has no significant effect in patients with non-ulcer dyspepsia and we suggest a similar study be performed to assess the effect of cisapride in these patients.