Accepted answer
Only what the 15 mg arm reported, and the denominator is that arm rather than the trial. Adverse-event tables are published per arm, so the 15 mg incidence of reflux has its own numerator and its own denominator, and pooling it with the other arms produces a figure that describes nobody. Two further deductions before you use it. Subtract the placebo arm — reflux occurs in people who received nothing, and the difference is the part attributable to the drug. And check whether SURPASS-2 counted events or counted participants: one participant with six episodes is one row in a participant count and six in an event count, and the two get quoted interchangeably. Nothing here is medical advice.
To be exact about it, the trial answers a narrower question than the headline suggests, and the narrowing is where the useful information is.
A composite endpoint is only as informative as its least serious component. Where a cardiovascular composite combines death, infarction and stroke, ask which component moved, because they are not interchangeable outcomes.
Trial populations are selected. Exclusion criteria in this class routinely remove people with significant renal impairment, prior pancreatitis and unstable psychiatric illness, which is exactly the population the results are then quoted for.
Registry entries at ClinicalTrials.gov carry the pre-specified primary endpoint with a timestamp, which is the cheapest available check on whether an endpoint was changed after the data were seen.
The short version: check the endpoint, check the comparator, check who was excluded, then look at the number.
edited 5 Aug 2026 by Dr_Ingrid_Baumgartner — tightened the wording; no substantive change