Acid Reflux or GERD

Acid reflux or gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) is a condition where acid, which your stomach makes to help you absorb food and is a normal process in your stomach, ends up leaving your stomach and going back up into your esophagus. It causes a burning sensation because it causes inflammation of the lining of the esophagus. Not everybody who has acid reflux needs surgery. Over time, that valve in between your stomach and your esophagus can start to weaken or not work as well. The angle can actually change because some people have part of the stomach that comes up into their chest. That's called a hiatal hernia. Not everybody who has acid reflux has a hiatal hernia, but the hiatal hernia itself isn't the problem. It's the fact that it's changed the angle of that valve so that it doesn't work as well.

I do quite a bit of testing to try to make sure that's truly the problem—because there's a lot of other problems that can feel like you have heartburn that aren't necessarily acid reflux related—and to see which surgery might be best for you if that's the route you decide to go.

There's medical options. There's a PPI (proton pump inhibitors) therapy like omeprazole or pantoprazole. There's also another medication called an H2 blocker (Pepcid or famotidine) that's sometimes used. Those are great drugs.

But the ultimate cure is helping that flap valve close better so that you don't have acid coming up into your esophagus anymore. And the medications just kind of mask that by decreasing the acid in your stomach. So if we recreate that flap valve with surgery, then we can have a better system that leads to more patient satisfaction. It leads to less problems down the road in my opinion because patients come off all those medications that have been shown to cause osteoporosis, C. diff, kidney problems, and even sometimes heart and brain problems in some smaller studies.