Extraesophageal Manifestation of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

Abstract

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is defined by the Montreal Consensus as “a condition which develops when the reflux of stomach contents causes troublesome symptoms and/or complications.” The Brazilian Consensus is more precise and acknowledges the plethora of GERD symptoms defining GERD as “a chronic disorder related to the retrograde flow of gastro-duodenal contents into the esophagus and/or adjacent organs, resulting in a spectrum of symptoms, with or without tissue damage.” This make clear that GERD has a myriad of clinical presentations encompassing esophageal and extraesophageal symptoms making the diagnosis of the disease difficult in some cases. Virtually all adjacent organs to the esophagus may be affected by the gastric contents and new discoveries are made on a regular basis showing that even distant organs may be affected by GERD as well. Extraesophageal presentations can have multifactorial, often non-GERD, causes, and causality between reflux and these clinical entities is sometimes difficult to prove.