| Howard McCollister 2006-03-01, 12:55 am |
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"Pete" <pete@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:1209qbcne4uep98@corp.supernews.com...
> Thank you Howard for the great explanation. So straining would indirectly
> affect the LES via pressure on the stomach, and once it heals everything
> should be okay. May I ask when your practice does the advanced fundo
> procedures, what estimate of risk do you give most of your patients for
> bad results like difficulty swallowing, or vomiting, or burping. If its
> greater than one per cent (eg say 5%), I would worry like hell...Pete
>
Pete, those three issues don't represent bad results, they are basically
unavoidable side effects of fundoplication surgery to at least some extent.
The ultimate issue is whether they represent any kind of significant
disability to the patient wherein the cure is worse than the disease. The
answer is that they don't. The extent to which they occur is variable and
the swallowing issues in particular are transient. Likewise, the extent to
which they annoy the patient is variable. Patient satisfaction rates for
fundoplication are very high, as you no doubt have seen from your research,
despite the relatively high incidence of these things.
HMc
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