Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is essentially heartburn and a number of other symptoms that are put together and labeled with the name GERD to describe it as a disease. It's often a diagnosis that's made by a physician, either after a careful physical examination and perhaps some invasive testing, and also based on the symptoms that a patient has.
What causes heartburn?
It is almost always caused by acid from the stomach irritating the esophagus and causing pain. Some people don't have very good muscle control in the sphincter that's at the bottom of the esophagus, which prevents stomach contents from coming back into the esophagus. And when that muscle doesn't work very well, sometimes they get reflux of stomach contents into their esophagus.
How prevalent is heartburn in America?
I think the number of Americans that have heartburn is really very large, and we're probably talking about 20 or 30 million adult Americans. So it's a common problem. The majority of patients with heartburn have episodic, reasonably easy-to-control heartburn.
Can heartburn be prevented?
The goal of heartburn treatment is really symptom relief. It's either complete or partial relief of symptoms to enable the patient to better function and enjoy life without the recurrence of heartburn.
Most heartburn is amenable to prevention therapy. Certainly, people who have episodic heartburn, that's perhaps triggered by certain meals or certain kinds of foods is really treatable by prevention therapy. There's a number of different ways that you can do that. But I think prevention therapy is a useful idea for almost everyone with heartburn.
