GERD (Gastro Esophageal reflux disease) is a common disease that occurs in most of the infants. The two main symptoms associated to GERD disease includes spitting up the food and crying. On an average infants cry for 3 hours every day and the crying time will vary with the healthiness of the infant.
The common diagnosis process for GERD involves endoscopy, esophageal PH and biopsy. But most of the physicians are prescribing PPI (proton pump inhibitors) and H2 blockers in order to treat the GERD.
Though these PPI and H2 blockers are not approved by the FDI to treat GERD but in last 8 years, there has been explosive growth of prescribing these medications to infants less than 1 year old. Reports show that the number has raised from 18,000 to 145,000 in a period of 2002 – 2009.
In infants, stomach acid plays major role in absorption of nutrients but these PPI blockers suppress the stomach acid and have some short term side effects on the infants such as drowsiness, constipation, nausea, dizziness and head ache.