What to do with functional dyspepsia?

Functional dyspepsia, also known as ulcerative indigestion (non-ulcer dyspepsia) . This is the term used to describe a syndrome of pain or discomfort in the epigastric region without the damage of internal organs in the body.

The disease persists for a long time, despite the benign nature, it makes the patients very worried and uncomfortable, affecting their work and daily life. The disease is very common, up to 25% of the population is ill, but only a few of these people go to see a doctor.

In Vietnam, people often consider themselves with peptic ulcer disease, can take medication for themselves or do not take drugs, the symptoms still decrease each time and then reappear.

Digestive system from mouth to stomach (Photo: TTO)

Factors leading to indigestion

Until now, the cause of the disease has not been clear, but there are a number of factors that clearly affect the occurrence of diseases such as:

- Dysfunction of duodenal gastric contraction: 30-50% of those suffering from the process of expelling food from their stomach and intestines are slowed.

- Increased sensitivity of nerves to pressure in the duodenal stomach.

- Social psychological factors such as stress, stress, anxiety in life also make many people sick, especially in the context of life pressure today.

Besides, infection with Helicobacter pylori is also a very noticeable cause.

Expression of the disease

Illness can manifest symptoms like a peptic ulcer or manifest itself only with contractions. In the case of symptoms with peptic ulcer symptoms, the patient has epigastric pain, pain when hunger, pain when ingested, pain may appear at night, causing the patient to wake up and have pain can appear at a certain time of the day.

Some patients manifested by symptoms of contractile disorder such as: patients feeling full and fast, after eating, they felt badly, there may be nausea or vomiting, belching, flatulence in the epigastric region, symptoms increase after eating to make people sick to eat. In some cases the disease may be a combination of the above symptoms.

How to detect the disease?

Although the patients felt the symptoms were very clear, however, when the clinical examination did not see anything special. Diagnosis is based on the elimination of physical pathologies by ultrasound and duodenal gastroscopy. Ultrasound helps to eliminate hepatobiliary diseases such as gallbladder stones, hepatic stones, common bile duct stones, liver tumors, pancreatic tumors, chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic peptic ulcers to exclude the Gastrointestinal diseases such as gastric ulcer, duodenal ulcer, stomach cancer.

In indigestion, there is no ulcer, blood count test and biochemical blood tests are completely within normal limits. Normal ultrasound images. Photos of duodenal gastric endoscopy or may have inflammatory atrophy of the gastric mucosa. The image of atrophy of the gastric mucosa is a result of a random finding, this is not the cause of the disease because in clinical practice, many patients have found inflammation of the gastric mucosa at the end of the examination, but completely There are no symptoms. It is because the endoscopy does not show any lesions or the inflammation of the gastric mucosa that the patient has gastroscopy (completely unnecessary) many times in a short time when symptoms still appear.

Prevention and treatment

For patients with indigestion, it is necessary to eliminate certain diseases before diagnosis of indigestion without ulcers, especially for people over 45 years of age, age who are prone to stomach cancer.

So far, there is no way to treat specific, but mainly symptomatic treatment. Drug treatment to reduce symptoms: acid resistance: maalox, gastrofulgite .; acid secretion drugs: H2 receptor resistance: cimetidine, ranitidine .; proton pump inhibitors: omeprazole, lanzoprazole, rabeprazole, esmoprazole .; Drugs that act on contractions of the gastrointestinal tract: domperidone, metoclopramide . It should be noted that these drugs must be indicated by a physician to be used.

In the case of Helicobacter pylori infection, it is necessary to kill bacteria with proton pump inhibitors together with 2 of the 4 following antibiotics: amoxycillin, clarythromycin, klion and tetraxyclin. In some cases, antidepressants may be used for treatment.

In the case of treatment, the symptoms persist, the actual diseases have been excluded, the physician avoids testing and gastric examination many times causing confusion for patients.

This is a benign disease that is not dangerous to life but very troublesome in the lives of patients, so in order to prevent and limit the effects of disease, patients need to have a scientific regime to avoid stress. Unnecessary, eat easy-to-eat foods, low in fat, high in fiber, enhance physical activity like walking, preferably choose an appropriate sport. Patients need to be explained to relieve the anxiety that they have long-term illness leading to cancer or cancer.

Patients also need to know that there are episodes that can completely clear the symptoms, but then the symptoms may reappear, so it is important to pay attention to the regimen to reduce the recurrence of the disease. .

MSc. Vu Truong Khanh