Just over two and a half years post op having had an oesophagectomy, Until two months ago i have sufferd with very bad reflux problems resulting in being sick every morning in the early hours.Then after going in to have a endoscopy i had a dialation, which worked well until now .reflux was nowhere as bad , i could eat more , and i got more than three to four hours sleep ! now i am about to go in for another and the said they are going to try botox injections. has any one had this done if so does it work ,and what is involed?. Hope all of that made sense, first time of writing on this site which by the way i think is fantastic.
Trevor
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handy
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I do know of others who have it done.Doesnt always work but majority do.The injection of botox does what botox is intended to do by paralsying the surrounding muscles therfore stopping the reflux.Hope that helps in a small way
Thanks for the quick response griff any information is a help.
Well done on taking the plunge and asking the question!
If you look back through the questions, you will see that we have had a question about botox before (back in June). The other way of finding questions is to click on the Tags bit of the blue bar at the top of the page, and then find the subject in the Tags A-Z.
Normally we have two valves, one at the top, and one at the bottom of the stomach. The top one, between the oesophagus and the stomach, should stop the reflux rising, but it will have been removed during the surgery. There is not a choice about that.
The other valve is the pylorus sphincter at the bottom of the stomach. This needs to work properly, otherwise the stomach does not clear and you get nausea and some of what you have described. It sounds as if it cleared the problem when your pylorus sphincter was stretched, and using botox, which has all sorts of medical uses, can be used to improve the muscles in this valve, hopefully with the same effect. I do not know how long the botox will be effective for - you will have to ask your surgeon about that - but it is possible, perhaps, that it will train your pylorus sphincter into working properly on much more of a longer term basis.
Hi Trevor - can give you some information on this as my partner Nielsen had a botox injection in June following a lot of problems with swallowing - he had no real problems with reflux - until after the botox that is ! For him it really has made things worse - but and I must stress this for some it works - the botox seems to have worked in as much as much more acid is now able to splash back up into the stomach but not enough to ease the passage of food, we saw our surgeon on monday who did another swallow test which showed the valve is still very tight, our option now is to have it surgically cut but there is no guarantee with that , it is not reversible and would involve another operation. The injection will last 4-6 months so we are going to wait and see how things are before making any decisions about more surgery.If you do decide to go for it the proceedure itself was relatively simple and done endoscopically so no general aneasthetic needed. Hope this helps.
I had 3 lots over a period of 12 months for the same reflux reasons, it is a quick procedure by endoscopy.
For me, botox was a quick fix each time but only for a few months, I had a permanent fix by a procedure called plyorplasty.
I do know other patients in my area that have had very successful with one or two botox shots for a permanent result, everyone is different and I was just one of the few unlucky ones where botox did not work.
Thanks dave i am going to give it a try booked in for thursday i have to try something ,to try and ease it.
Some surgeons do make an incision in the pylorus sphincter at the time of the original surgery to pre-empt some of these problems but it is not a cut-and-dried issue. Some of them do it on a case-by-case basis; others believe that it is better to await developments and then address any problems afterwards.
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