New Acid Reflux Treatment

New Acid Reflux Treatment Dr. Travis Stork: We have Dr. Kevin Reavis to help answer Lila’s question. He’s a gastrointestinal surgeon from UCI Medical Center in Irvine California. Welcome to the show. Dr. Drew Ordon: Welcome. Dr. Kevin Reavis: Thank you. It’s good to be here. Dr. Travis Stork: Kevin, we get this question all the time. We want to hear the in’s and outs about acid reflux, okay. Dr. Kevin Reavis: Acid reflux by definition is the acid in your stomach washing up in your esophagus, creating heartburn symptoms that Lila was complaining about at home. Dr. Travis Stork: Which is so common, a lot of people have it, but it’s from time to time, nothing that you have to worry about, nothing to have to change your lifestyle, but she is suffering from it all the time. Dr. Kevin Reavis: When medicines are not able to completely take care of the situation, or patient’s situation basically is pretty like controlled medication, some of the procedures we can do involve new endoluminal treatments if they’re not so severe that they require a formal surgery. Dr. Drew Ordon: This is a relatively new procedure, the EsophyX? Dr. Kevin Reavis: That’s correct. This is the device here and it basically is inserted over a flexible endoscope which I’ll show. Here which has a camera on the tip that allows me to look around on the inside of an individual patient’s stomach and guide the procedure. The EsophyX device then deploys these fasteners which are absolutely key to the procedure which takes place on the inside. The ideal candidate would be someone who’s acid reflux is poorly control of medication. But it’s not so severe that they require formal surgery. Dr. Drew Ordon: Can you show us how this works? Dr. Kevin Reavis: So the device is inserted with the endoscope in place, into the patient’s mouth. And as you can see on the animation, the device is placed in the mouth, down the esophagus, into the stomach. The camera has allowed to look around and make sure that they were in their appropriate location. And then the EsophyX device grabs a small portion of the stomach and pulls it down, this creates a valve, the fasteners are then deployed and creates a new one way valve from the esophagus into the stomach. As you can see here, so that’s swallowed contents go down into the stomach and they stay there, rather than washing back up in the esophagus and create the heartburn symptoms we talked about. Dr. Travis Stork: So a great option and once you have this, hopefully, from that point forward, you’re not going to need anymore treatment with medications, correct? Dr. Kevin Reavis: So the goal is for patient to either don’t tolerate medication and they don’t want to be on medication for the rest of their life, this is a potential treatment option. Dr. Travis Stork: Well, thank you so much for sharing this new technology with us. We appreciate it.