Input on EsophyX tif surgery

I had it done about 8 months ago. From my experience of having the surgery done I can tell you that you should be very careful about moving ahead and doing another surgery. Although my throat symptoms are slightly better, I still have trouble breathing, I also regurgitate food, have sleep apnea, and constant nasal congestion. For some reason too, after my surgery I haven't been able to take any antacids because they make my symptoms worse. I'm kinda in the same boat as you however because I'm thinking of getting the nissen done.

I has the Esophyx procedure done in 2007. I don't really have throat issues, but I was up to two 40mg nexium a day and still experiencing nausea and heartburn. I wasn't sure about the Nissen since there seems to be a lot of complications with that procedure, but Esophyx seemed like a better, less invasive solution.

I did it with Dr. Scott Melvin at The Ohio State University Medical Center. First, I ended up having to go back to the hospital after being released 24-hours later because I couldn't keep the pain meds they gave me down and kept throwing them up. It also turned out I had ileus (decreased motor function of intestines usually common with very invasive surgeries). I was in the hospital another day or two so they could get that moving again with some meds. And then it was probably 2 weeks before I could really go back to work and then a few more weeks until I was eating normally again.

Unfortunately, I started to get heartburn again and had to go back on nexium. I was only on 40mg once a day and that seemed to be handling it better than 2 a day were doing before the surgery, so I initially received some benefit. The last few years I've seen my symptoms increase again and after doing a endoscopy they found that I now have a moderately sized hiatal hernia. At the time of the surgery I was told I had a very small one that was negligible. What they didn't tell me was that since the Esophyx procedure is an internal operation to the esophagus, it does not in any way address hiatal hernias and if your hernia were to get larger, it could move the staples or clamps out of place effectively eliminating the benefit from the procedure. Which is what has happened to me. I'm back up to 2 nexium a day and am told the only way to address hiatal hernia is with the Nissen Fundoplication.

I also found out with a sleep study this summer that I have pretty serious sleep apnea, so I've been using a CPAP machine for several weeks now and am hoping getting better sleep will perhaps help my stomach some. It was suggested that some of my nausea I experience could be from lack of sleep. So we will see how that goes.

Overall, I'm very unsatisfied with the Esophyx procedure. I did initially see a small benefit at first, but it was hardly the cure I was hoping for.