Hiatal Hernia Repair Laparoscopic In Clearwater, FL

Endoscopy does not diagnose reflux. It looks for damage from reflux. A normal endoscopy tells you that reflux has not yet caused visible injury; it does not tell you whether reflux is happening, how often, how long each episode lasts, or whether your symptoms line up with those episodes. Small hiatal hernias are also missed on endoscopy routinely. If you were told your scope was clean and nothing was wrong, you were evaluated with an incomplete tool.

Four tests answer four different questions, and Dr. Grandhige personally reviews every study before you sit down with him:

• pH monitoring is the reference standard for proving reflux. Using a wireless Bravo capsule or a catheter probe, it records 48 to 72 hours while you eat, sleep, exercise, and work.
• Esophageal manometry measures whether your esophagus is strong and coordinated enough to handle added resistance at the junction. It also identifies achalasia, esophageal spasm, ineffective motility, jackhammer esophagus, and a hypertensive LES, all of which can mimic reflux and none of which improve with reflux surgery.
• Barium esophagram shows how you swallow in real time, including pill and food studies that reproduce your symptoms. One finding from this test is worth knowing: where a patient feels food sticking matches the actual anatomic location only about 60% of the time. Patients regularly point at their throat when the delay is in the distal esophagus.
• Upper endoscopy maps anatomy, finds complications, and provides the access point for placing a pH probe.

If you have throat symptoms rather than heartburn, standard testing will probably miss the problem. For silent reflux, Dr. Grandhige uses a customized 24-hour pH impedance dual-channel probe that measures reflux above the lower esophageal sphincter and above the upper esophageal sphincter, including non-acid reflux like bile, pepsin, and trypsin. The distinction is physiologic: the esophagus tolerates 40 to 50 reflux episodes a day, while the larynx and pharynx can become symptomatic from one. Patients evaluated with standard testing are typically quoted a 50% chance that surgery helps their throat symptoms. With dual-channel testing to select the right candidates, that figure rises to roughly 80%. The tradeoff is that only about 50% to 60% of LPR patients turn out to have testing that justifies an operation. Fewer operations, better matched.

If you have read that RefluxStop is coming to Tampa Bay in 2026, here is the current status. The device has held a European CE mark since 2018 with published five-year outcomes, but it is still in the FDA Premarket Approval process in the US. Implantica submitted its final response to FDA on Module 3 of the PMA application in May 2026, and a decision remains pending. The manufacturer states the device is not available for sale in the US.

Dr. Grandhige intends to add RefluxStop once it clears FDA review. Until then, no surgeon in Florida can implant it outside a trial, and any page telling you otherwise is ahead of the regulator. Your realistic surgical choices today are fundoplication and LINX.

Clearwater is already one of the areas patients regularly come from, and the practice is built to keep your trips across the bay to a minimum. When testing can be done near you in Pinellas County, the office arranges it locally. When it has to happen in Tampa, studies are grouped onto the fewest days possible, and the team coordinates scheduling, travel timing, follow-up logistics, and hotels for patients who need them.

Send your records to info@tampareflux.com before your appointment: prior endoscopy and pathology reports, pH studies, manometry, barium swallow or imaging, notes from your gastroenterologist, ENT, pulmonologist, or allergist, and your medication and surgical history. Dr. Grandhige reads all of it before you arrive. Patients who send records get a decision-making visit instead of a data-gathering visit.

The timeline is predictable. New patients are usually seen within two weeks and always within four. If your testing is already complete, one consultation is typically enough and surgery can be scheduled as early as four weeks out. If testing is still needed, expect two consultations about four weeks apart and surgery within roughly eight weeks of your first visit. Authorization runs in parallel and takes four to six weeks on its own, which the office handles for you.

The drive is 25 miles or so, 30 to 40 minutes outside of rush hour, via the Courtney Campbell Causeway (SR 60) or the Howard Frankland Bridge. The office is at 1315 South Howard Avenue, Suite 101, in a yellow brick building next to Sally O’Neill’s Pizza. Park behind the restaurant.

Gopal Grandhige, MD is a board-certified general surgeon who has practiced foregut and anti-reflux surgery in Tampa Bay since 2009. He earned a BS in biology from Johns Hopkins University and his MD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, then completed general surgery residency and fellowships in burn and critical care and in foregut and minimally invasive surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is a Founding Member of the American Foregut Society, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a member of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons. He founded Tampa Bay Reflux Center in 2009 and Tampa Bay Reflux Institute in 2022 to work only on benign disease of the esophagus, diaphragm, and stomach. He evaluates and treats more than 600 reflux patients a year and has performed over 600 fundoplications, over 600 LINX procedures, and over 200 TIF procedures. You can verify all of it through the American Board of Surgery physician lookup, the American College of Surgeons directory, and the Florida Department of Health license search.

He holds privileges at St. Joseph’s Main, St. Joseph’s South, HCA Brandon, and HCA South Tampa, and performs every foregut operation at HCA South Tampa Hospital only. That is deliberate. The same anesthesiologists, nurses, surgical technologists, and his own employed physician assistant work every case, so equipment is set up the same way each time and problems are anticipated rather than discovered. His physician assistant assists in every operation, knows your specific anatomy and procedure, and is reachable afterward. So is he, directly, after hours.

Not every patient is offered surgery, and he is candid that the patients he declines are often the most frustrated. He also considers that the point: the same patients would be unhappier after an operation that did not fix anything. If GERD-like symptoms turn out to be esophageal hypersensitivity, functional chest pain, or a motility disorder, he says so and refers you to the physician who can actually help.