Chronic Acid Reflux: When Medication Isn't Enough and Surgery May Be Your Answer

You have acid reflux again, and it’s become a chronic condition. Eating has become a quandary. You’re almost afraid to start eating because you don’t want to feel that burning pain in your chest or experience food coming back up into your throat. 

At Turnquest Surgical Solutions, our board-certified bariatric surgeons, Dexter Turnquest, MD, and Victoria C. Chang, MD, perform surgery for chronic acid reflux. If medication and lifestyle alterations haven’t worked, it’s time to consider surgery to combat your condition. 

Aside from the discomfort, letting acid reflux become chronic isn’t good for your health. It could lead to open ulcers from irritation of your esophageal lining or to Barrett’s esophagus, a precancerous condition due to constant friction. 

To control acid reflux when conservative methods haven’t worked, Dr. Turnquest and Dr. Chang use minimally invasive surgical methods that cause few complications, little bleeding, and lead to a fast recovery.  

Following are two procedures we use that relieve chronic acid reflux. 

Hiatal hernia surgery 

Hiatal hernias are common, especially among older adults. About  70% of people over age 70 have a hiatal hernia. Although not everyone with a hiatal hernia experiences symptoms, acid reflux is a common condition among those with a hiatal hernia. 

Your diaphragm is a large muscle that helps hold your stomach in place below your chest. Muscles weaken as you age, and when the diaphragm muscle is weak, your stomach can push through an opening in it. That’s a hiatal hernia. 

During hiatal hernia surgery, we wrap the upper part of your stomach around the lower part of your esophagus. It tightens your lower esophageal sphincter muscle enough so food stays in your stomach and no longer travels upward into the esophagus. We use minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery to repair your hernia. 

LINX surgery 

The LINX reflux management system is a minimally invasive procedure that controls acid reflux. With laparoscopic surgery, we only need to make a few tiny cuts to access your lower esophagus. 

Using a high-intensity camera, we place a flexible magnetic ring that looks like a beaded bracelet around the end of your esophagus. 

The ring opens to allow food and liquids to move into your stomach, and it closes the opening to the esophagus when you’re not eating. We place a bandage on the incisions. The procedure takes less than an hour. 

We let you know which procedure is best for your condition. If you have a large hernia, we most likely will perform hiatal hernia surgery. With LINX, you don’t have a special temporary post-op diet as you would with hiatal hernia surgery, and your recovery may be faster. Both are effective minimally invasive treatments for chronic acid reflux. 

If acid reflux is ruining your relationship with food, call us today at Turnquest Surgical Solutions or book an appointment through our online portal at one of our two convenient Houston, Texas, locations.