Best Treatments For Heartburn In St. Petersburg, FL

No procedure is recommended until testing shows reflux is present and causing your symptoms. A normal endoscopy doesn’t rule out reflux, and symptoms alone are unreliable, so the diagnosis is confirmed with objective testing first. Each test answers a different question.

Upper endoscopy (EGD) looks for damage: inflammation, Barrett’s esophagus, ulcers, a hernia. It does not diagnose GERD. Many people with real reflux have a normal scope, especially while taking acid medication. Endoscopy answers “has reflux caused damage,” not “is reflux happening, how often, and why.”

pH monitoring is the gold standard for that second question. It measures how often reflux happens, how long each episode lasts, how acidic it is, when it occurs, and whether your symptoms line up with reflux events. It records over 48 to 72 hours while you eat, sleep, and work, because reflux is a moving target that a brief clinic snapshot can’t capture.

Esophageal manometry measures the strength and coordination of your esophagus. It decides whether surgery is safe at all and which wrap is appropriate. Skipping it is how patients end up unable to swallow after an operation. The question it answers is simple: does your esophagus have the strength to handle a reflux procedure.

A barium swallow, used when swallowing is the issue, shows the esophagus in motion and catches narrowings a scope misses. One detail that surprises patients: where you feel food get stuck matches the true location only about 60% of the time. People often point to their throat when the delay is actually low in the esophagus.

Throat symptoms need a different test. Chronic cough, hoarseness, throat clearing, or a lump sensation can be silent reflux (LPR), and standard reflux testing misses it because it only measures acid low in the esophagus. Dr. Grandhige uses a 24-hour dual-channel pH-impedance probe that measures reflux above both the lower and upper esophageal sphincters and detects non-acid reflux, like bile and pepsin, that acid-only testing can’t see. This matters because the throat is far more sensitive than the esophagus. The esophagus can tolerate 40 to 50 reflux episodes a day; the larynx can react to as little as one. With this testing, he selects the right patients and raises the odds of improvement for silent reflux to roughly 80%, compared with the 50% often quoted when surgery is offered without it.

St. Petersburg patients are seen at the practice’s South Tampa office at 1315 South Howard Avenue, a short drive across the bay. From St. Pete and greater Pinellas, the office is reachable over the Howard Frankland Bridge on I-275, the Gandy Bridge, or the Courtney Campbell Causeway.

Many St. Pete patients arrive after seeing local providers, being told their scope was normal, and being left on medication that only half worked. The practice is set up so you’re not driving back and forth. Testing you’ve already had elsewhere is reviewed before your visit, and when possible, remaining testing is arranged closer to home so trips to Tampa are kept to a minimum. Send prior records ahead of your appointment (endoscopy and pathology reports, pH testing, manometry, imaging, and notes from GI, ENT, pulmonology, and primary care) so your first visit is spent on answers, not paperwork.

New patients are usually seen within two weeks and always within four. If a procedure is the right step, most patients move from consultation to surgery within four to eight weeks, depending on testing and scheduling.

Tampa Bay Reflux Institute 1315 South Howard Avenue, Suite 101 Tampa, FL 33606 Phone: 813.922.2920 Hours: Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 6 PM The office is in the yellow brick building next to Sally O’Neill’s Pizza, with parking behind the restaurant.