Click on Home for more heartburn information.
Other message boards can be viewed at: Message Boards
Post new questions on the New Message Board
[ Home | Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ] This is a Read Only archive.
From: Dan K
Date: 09/08/01
Time: 12:31 AM
Jula,
Sorry that it took so long for me to get back to this post. I had my stretta on August 15 with Dr. Noar in Towson, MD (outside of baltimore). He is a GI physician in private practice with an endoscopy unit. He specializes in therapeutic endoscopy and I believe has now done upwards of 100 stretta procedures with a fairly high success rate (pushing 95%) which is judged by asymptomatic (including some patients who are asymptomatic on meds). To my knowledge he doesn't perform the procedure on patients who are asymptomatic while on meds when they first come to him. Right now i'm feeling a bit better than prior to the procedure. The first night I just felt a sore throat, something that i'd never had in four previous EGDs. But then again, I was in the proceudre for close to an hour compared with 15 minutes for a typical EGD. I had no problem with the sedation which was benadryl followed up with a combination of vallium and versed. Recovery was typical in terms of grogginess. For about 5-6 days post proceudre I had a good deal of bloating and some pain the lower back (similar to gas pains). I also couldn't lift things or lie in certain positions without feeling some tenderness in the stomach area. I was given a prescription for percocet which I filled, but never used. Instead I took extra strength tylenol a few times (no more than 3x a day for a few days. My symptoms have been alleviated somewhat although about 3 weeks into it i felt as bad as i did before the procedure, but this is fairly typical, as he told me that about 25% of the patients he has seen show relapses between 3-7 weeks. He accounts for this by saying that this is the period when the swelling goes down and before all the nerve damage has been done. I am still on meds and go to see him again in two weeks where we will discuss what sort of tapering to start (if any for the time being). So far i have no complaints. Now for the symptoms i had, etc. prior to the procedure. About four years ago I first experienced reflux and was finally diagnosed as having IBS. While I never felt completely normal (2 EGDs came back clean and a pH probe result of moderate reflux), with daily use of citrucel i was able to alleviate most of my symptoms and during the last year before my relapse i had finally gained weight (about 10 pounds in a year which was good for me). About a year ago I think that I must have gotten a viral infection and felt nauceous although i had no vommitting. i did have some diarhea and became dehydrated enough that i had to go to the er and have iv. I went back to taking prilosec and at that time reglan. A CT scan came back normal, an EGD also came back normal as did all my bloodwork. I was still not very responsive to the meds. My main symptoms were bloating after meals, frequent belching, even after drinking a bit of water in the morning, and a sour taste in my mouth most of the time. Certain periods in the day i would feel liquid come up with a bitter taste. I couldn't correlate this to any food in particular, although alochol and pizza are definite triggers. I tried a variety of med changes/additions, dropped the reglan pretty quickly because it gave me insomnia and frequent urination. I went through manometry (low les pressure). I wasn't able to tolerate the pH probe this time, although i'm not really convinced that the test is all that useful for a number of reasons (a positive result is probably accurate, but negative results aren't really conclusive imho). i had an upper gi series which showed a lot of reflux, a CINES esophagram which showed no reflux (go figure), a gastric emptying study which showed normal emptying, although the test conducted at hopkins evidently doesn't show all the potential problems. The surgeon i went to see was hesitant to go through with surgery because he felt that there might be complications. He wanted me to consult with another GI who believes that some of my symptoms were related to dyspepsia and put me on a low dose of a cyclic antidepressant. I ended up having to get fluids again for nausea associated with the drug. At the same time I went to see Dr. Noar for another opinion as i was interested in finding another alternative which would be less invasive than surgery. I never really considered looking for anyone who does the endocinch. i had known someone else who went to have a stretta which i guess pushed me towards that direction. he gave me an EGG (electrogastrogram) which showed a stomach arrythmia of some sort. After trying some different meds and being fed up with feeling lousy and having lost almost fifteen pounds in less than a year (putting me under 120 for a 25 year old male 5'8.5" that wasn't great), I decided to go through with the stretta. Note that this didn't come cheap. my insurance wouldn't cover the cost of the catheter (~$1100) and only 80% of the rest of the procedure. The total cost (not including office visits comes to nearly $3000 of which we'll see how much the insurance company does pony up. so far no regrets. I will note that i haven't had any sour taste in my mouth since the stretta. knock on wood. hope this was somewhat helpful.
dan