My persistent heartburn has not healed even after taking medicines for more than 1 month. Why?

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

You have briefly and well described your history, and I understand that you have very genuine concerns.

So, the problem you have is called gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). This is basically reflux of acid from the stomach to food pipe causing heartburn, sore throat, sometimes cough, and shortness of breath. Our stomach produces approximately 1 liter of acidic juices to help digest food. The acid produced does not usually come into food pipe unless someone has loose sphincter at the lower end of our food pipe which prevents acid refluxing into the food pipe.

There are two further classifications of GERD. PPI responsive GERD, and PPI refractory GERD. Your symptoms suggest that you have PPI (proton pump inhibitor) responsive GERD since your symptoms are significantly improved when you are taking PPI.

Even in PPI responsive GERD the symptoms may not completely vanish but are declined to a reasonable level and this may be in your case. For this, you just need to increase the dose of PPI. Instead of once daily dose, you can start taking it twice a day before meals. The rest of your symptoms like sore throat will go away once your acid reflux is suppressed well.

Diet may or may not affect the GERD. However, there are certain precautions that you can do to prevent heartburn. Avoiding large volume meals, instead, take small but frequent meals. Avoid taking large meals at night or before going to bed. Give at least three to four hours gap after night meals before going to bed for sleeping. Raise the head end of your bed by placing a cement or wooden block down the head side of your bed. Or there are commercially available anti-reflux mattresses that can be used instead. Avoid wearing tight-fitting clothes and belts.

So your concern about the presence of symptoms despite 42 days of treatment is valid, but you see the acid is produced daily, and the medicines can decrease the acid production for the duration of time they are in the blood, once the level of the drug declines from a certain point, the acid production takes over back. So taking a daily pill to control your acid production is the only effective way of treating your condition.

No long term use and side effects. Well, all PPI are relatively safe and do not cause significant side effects if taken for years and years. However, there are studies that have shown renal damage, bone protein loss, and aspiration pneumonia but in practice, these side effects are not that common as elaborated in studies. The one daily pill to control your acid and prevailing a normal lifestyle is much more important than unforeseen and often unestablished side effects from long term use of PPI.

I would recommend if PPI helps you to do well then there is no reason for stopping for the sake of unforeseen complications. But if you still have a concern about the long use of PPI, then I would recommend you to get PH-impedance 24 hours testing to confirm GERD, and if present then PPI again is the therapy, but if the test comes out negative, then PPI can be stopped.I hope this helps.