Fri, Aug 20, 2010
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| Stomach ulcers? Antibiotics can help you | ||
| By Dr Sujit Singh Gill GASTRITIS or inflammation of the stomach's inner lining affects up to 20 per cent of the population. The common symptoms are pain in the upper abdominal area, usually around meal times. In some patients, eating food relieves the pain. In others, the opposite happens. This problem was long thought to be due to the production of too much acid in the stomach. This was thought to irritate the stomach lining and, when the lining eventually broke down, caused sores or ulcers. Acid production is regulated by several factors especially the vagus nerves and cells in a part of the stomach called the antrum. Patients who have had ulcers fora long time may have to be hospitalised if they develop serious complications, namely severe bleeding or perforation of the ulcer.Perforation occurs when the ulcer has eroded through the stomach wall, from the inner lining all the way to the outer lining. This perforation, or hole in the wall of the stomach, allows stomach contents to leak into the abdominal cavity, resulting in life-threatening infection. Nowadays, medication is used to reduce the acidity of the stomach. But patients used to undergo surgery to cure the ulcers, sometimes resulting in the removal of the antrum, till it was learned that removing the branches of the vagus nerves to the stomach would result in reduced acid production. It was only in 1982 that two Perth-based doctors, Dr Barry Marshall and Dr Robin Warren, proved that a bacteria called Helicobacter pylori living in the stomach causes gastritis and gastric ulcers. They then proved that this bacteria could be killed with antibiotics, resulting in improvement of the symptoms of gastritis or gastric ulcers. A problem that affects a large proportion of the world's population now suddenly had a cure. As the number of people being subjected to major stomach surgery plummeted, the two doctors were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005. Gastroscopy has now become one of the commonest procedures because it is safe and provides important information about patients with abdominal pain. With the gastroscope, tissue can even be removed from the stomach lining to test for Helicobacter pylori. Dr Sujit Singh Gill is a vascular and general surgeon in private practice. He can be contacted at sujitsinghgill@me.com |
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