silent acid reflux? In throat??

Hi,

Firstly with LPR no you don't always have a red sore throat I didn't, I did have a huge amount of pepsin getting into my throat which has caused permanent spasm, but no redness, it's acid that causes the swelling and redness not the pepsin.

No a barium swallow will not show up reflux into your throat, you will need a PH study and preferably an impedance PH study which will show if it's acid or non acidic or a combination of both.

I can recommend Gaviscon advance and doing a lot of salt gargles.

Hope this helps,

Pink

I also have sore burning throat everyday. When my ENT doc looked at my throat with his scope, he didn't see much redness. Only a bit beside my vocal chords. Thus he told me I may not even have LPR. Which is ridiculous, because I can feel the fluid travelling up my esophagus into my throat all the time! I also believe the irritation in our throat is largely due to pepsin, bile salts, etc. from our stomach contents--not so much acid. It has this watery, sometimes bitter taste that trickles out from the back of my throat into my mouth. It irritates my tongue, throat, and travels up into my sinuses making them feel inflammed--almost like I got a bad cold or hay fever.

Really what we are experiencing is non-acidic reflux. Which sucks, because we don't really respond well to PPIs (which suppresses acid), since acid is not really our problem. Really, there is no solution to this except surgery--which they generally don't do unless you're showing pathology from acidic reflux (i.e. Barrett's, severe esophagitis) etc.

Btw, gaviscon advance doesn't really help me at all. Don't know about the rest of you...