studly

My 11 year old son has LPR and the ENT doc has put him on Aciphex, one tablet twice daily. Even though he's been on Aciphex for several weeks, he's still constantly burping up stomach acid and food all day long and at night. (This has caused his throat to swell up and he has a tough time breathing, which is what took us to the ENT doc,) We've elevated his bed, he doesn't eat 3 hours before bedtime, we altered his diet to avoid common trigger foods, and even changed his diet drastically to test and see if there are any other trigger foods (i.e., he seems to burp up more after eating strawberries, but even when he doesn't eat them, he'll still burps up). Even keeping him on a bland diet, he'll burp up stomach acid first thing when he gets up in the morning, 12 hours after he last ate.

His ENT doc says to give the Aciphex several weeks or months to work, but we're worried, even if it does work, it won't treat the cause of the acid reflux ... just the symptoms. We don't want our son to be on PPIs for the rest of his life, if we can avoid it.

The ENT doc tried doing an in-office endosopy, but our son found it too uncomfortable, so if we decide to do that, he'll have to have it done at the hospital under anesthesia.

Anyway, are there any acid reflux disorders where PPIs actually fix the cause and not just the symptoms? Or is it more likely that we'll need to find out if he has a faulty stomach valve or a hiatial hernia or something physical that must be corrected through surgery? Or could an ulcer cause all this burping up ... in which case he could take antibiotics to correct it?

We're thinking of taking our son to a gastroenterologist so they can find the root cause of the acid reflux. Would an endoscopy likely tell them all they need to know about the cause of the acid reflux, or should we prepare for a battery of tests?