Aging and Disease

There are many ways to treat acid reflux, and the simplest way is to make some changes in your lifestyle and diet. But this will not cure your illness, it will only prevent the acid from the stomach pass the valve that separates it from the esophagus and get inside the esophagus which does not have any protection against the acid, therefore damaging it.

A good method of permanently curing acid reflux is acid reflux surgery. Surgery is the last thing that doctors recommend, because in many cases medication that stops the stomach from producing to much acid works just fine. But sometimes medication does not give any results. If two months pass after the patient started taking medication and no improvements are noticed then doctors recommend acid reflux surgery.

Surgery tries to fix the defective valve in order to stop the acids from leaking through it. The procedure is called fundoplication and it pulls the hiatal hernial sacs under the diaphragm bone and makes it stay there by stitching it. Furthermore, the opening through which food passes is narrowed so the chance that acids leak through it decreases.

In other words, a part of the stomach is placed around the lowest part of the esophagus and fixed under the diaphragm bone.

This seriously tightens and strengthens the border between the stomach and the esophagus and it also creates a new valve that only allows food to go from the esophagus into the stomach and not otherwise.

Acid reflux surgery is very efficient in stopping acid reflux, more that 95% of the patients reported that they had no more problems after it and the heartburn sensation was completely gone.

The surgery is performed through a small incision that the surgeon does in the abdominal area, and uses a laparoscope. The laparoscope is a small device used in many surgeries that is remote-controlled and that also has a small camera attached to it. The doctor inserts small surgical tools through the incision and then performs the surgery by looking at the images from the laparoscope camera. This way the scars left will be as small as possible, a major incision would have been required for the doctor to see the operation without the camera.

Sometimes, depending on how severe the acid reflux is, the patient will still have to take the medication after the surgery.

In some cases light complications appear after the surgery because larger chunks of food can’t pass the narrowed canal anymore, but this is temporary, food will eventually go down.

After one or two days the patient can return to his/her normal activities and never worry about acid reflux anymore.

Tags: Health, Cancer

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