Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) is not directly life-threatening. But if left untreated, this disease can lead to some complications that are quite dangerous and can be life-threatening.
Complications are for example, inflammation of the esophagus or esophagus to esophageal cancer. This disease can affect anyone. An online survey in Indonesia, which was followed by 2,045 respondents, showed that 57.6 percent of them suffer from GERD.
Treatment of GERD must also be done properly. Gastroenterology Specialist FKUI RSCM Ari Fahrial Syam said, GERD can indeed be cured but there is a risk of recurrence if the patient does not manage lifestyle and stress management properly.
“The most important management of GERD is to prevent recurrence,” said Ari in a virtual media briefing with the theme ‘Is it true that GERD is not life-threatening: new hope for improving healing and preventing GERD recurrence’, Thursday (10/2).
Therefore, education needs to be given to patients to understand the risk factors and triggers for GERD.
Patients with GERD will usually be recommended to make lifestyle changes to prevent recurrence, such as having an ideal body weight, quitting smoking, not lying down immediately after eating, eating slowly, and not wearing clothes that are too tight in the waist area.
“GERD can be cured, after recovering the important thing is how the patient can make lifestyle changes, avoid risk factors and triggers for his GERD recurrence,” he said.
GERD Pengobatan Treatment
Ari said, when someone suffers from GERD, the doctor will prescribe several choices of drugs such as antacids that are useful for neutralizing stomach acid. In addition, the doctor will also give H2 receptor antagonist drugs or proton pump inhibitors (PPI).
In certain conditions where GERD cannot be controlled with medication, the doctor may recommend surgery. However, Ari said, it is very rare for GERD cases to end with surgery.
“By giving medicine, you can also recover, for example, at this time there is a new innovation used for the treatment of GERD, namely Vonoprazan,” he said.
Ari explained, Vonoprazan is a new gastric acid suppressant drug that can be used for GERD patients. The drug is also available in Indonesia and the therapy is called a Potassium-Competitive Acid Blocker (PCAB).
“So this is known as PCAB therapy, namely using Vonoprazan,” he said.
The way it works is by increasing the pH of the stomach quickly while relieving heartburn, curing severe erosive esophagitis quickly and being able to control acid secretion well at night.
This drug, he said, has been used in infection eradication therapy in Japan and is believed to be able to replace the role of Proton Pump Inhibitor (PPl) which has been used to treat GERD. Vonoprazan has a higher eradication rate, longer duration of action, is more stable and has a higher success rate than PPIs.
“Vonoprazan can be indicated for patients with gastric ulcers, GERD and prevention of recurrent gastric ulcers on the use of low-dose aspirin and the use of NSAIDs,” he explained.
(tst/chs)
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