ABSTRACT
In the popular literature, the stomach is considered the “heart” of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Irrespective of where patients may actually have pathology, they are most likely to refer to a problem with “their stomach.” Likewise, gastroenterologists are often referred to informally as “stomach specialists. When patients with and without functional dyspepsia were compared, lower age, female gender, frequent upper-abdominal pain, lack of symptom relief with antacids, and infrequent vomiting were predictors of functional dyspepsia. Dyspepsia subgroups were poor discriminators of functional disorders compared to other GI diagnoses. One of the most recent developments in gastroenterology has been the discovery of the strong association between Helicobacter pylori and the development of chronic gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. Clearly, the medical management of non-ulcer dyspepsia is still evolving. Significant difficulties with the design of trials, particularly with inclusion criteria, symptom scoring, and outcome measures, hamper this research.
