Esophageal pH Monitoring

Esophageal pH monitoring can help diagnose a condition called “oesophageal reflux” or gastroesophageal reflux disease. This is when the stomach valve is not tight enough, and the stomach contents come up the oesophagus (food pipe) and your child vomits. This test measures the amount of acid refluxing or backing up from the stomach into the esophagus (food pipe).and helps the doctor decide on any further treatment. Esophageal pH monitoring is used in several situations to assess for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The first is to evaluate typical symptoms of GERD such as heartburn and regurgitation that do not respond to treatment with medications. In this situation, there may be a question whether the patient has gastroesophageal reflux disease disease or whether anti-acid medications are adequate to suppress the acid production. The second is when there are atypical symptoms of GERD such as chest pain, coughing, wheezing, hoarseness, sore throat. In this situation, it is not clear if the symptoms are due to gastroesophageal reflux. Occasionally, this test can be used to monitor the effectiveness of medications used to treat GERD. The test is often used as part of a pre-operative evaluation before anti-reflux surgery. IA doctor will pass a fine soft tube in your child’s nose down into their oesphagus. The tube is connected to a small portable machine called a “Mouse” for 24 hours. You can feed, change, and play with your child as usual.

Impedence Study

This new technology allows us to further evaluate the esophagus (feeding tube in the chest) when patients have symptoms that may or may not be related to acid reflux. This will help your doctor determine the cause of your symptoms. There are other movements of air/gas and liquid (or a mixture) within the esophagus that may give you symptoms but are not caused by acid reflux. Impedance testing can tell us whether it is that (or acid reflux) that is causing your symptoms.You will carry a recording device with you and you will receive instructions on how to use that. The messages from the Impedance catheter/tube are sent to the recording device and once you return next day we remove the tube and download the information from the recorder into the computer for the doctor to review.