Efficacy of Homoeopathic Treatment in Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease using GERD Questionnaire

Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease( GERD) is a commonly prevailing disease in the recent times owing to the fast paced urbanized way of living where emphasis on proper diet and lifestyle has been constantly being overlooked. Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease is identified by the presence of characteristic symptoms of heartburn, regurgitation of ingested food or acidic regurgitation and upper abdominal pain, in some cases presence of chronic cough and difficulty in swallowing is observed. Owing to the uncertainty in availability of invasive tests in primary care units, patient’s discomfort and high financial requirement of endoscopic studies, the need of non-invasive diagnostic measures such as scales and questionnaires have raised.A need arises to minimise the usage of invasive measures and at the same time to arrive at a satisfactory diagnosis. Various approaches have been devised to diagnose GERD without resorting to invasive procedures. Questionnaires represent one such method, enabling an objective evaluation of symptoms. These questionnaires typically comprise a series of inquiries to gauge severity (often utilizing scales like Likert’s scale), frequency, associated phenomena, nighttime symptoms, and occasionally quality of life. The benefits of questionnaires lie in their self-administration capability, utility as screening instruments, affordability, and applicability to any individual experiencing GERD symptoms. Based on the DIAMOND ROC analysis, logistic regression and relevance, as well as data from previous studies and qualitative interviews, six items from the different questionnaires were included in the new questionnaire, GerdQ contains 6 questions, which comprises four positive predictors of GERD: heartburn and regurgitation (the two characteristic symptoms of GERD, according to the Montreal definition), sleep disturbance because of these two reflux symptoms and two negative predictors of GERD, epigastric pain and nausea. Patients were asked to reflect on symptoms over the preceding week. Scores ranging from 0 to 3 were applied for the positive predictors and 10from 3 to 0 (reversed order, where 3 = none) for negative predictors. The GerdQ score was calculated as the sum of these scores, giving a total score ranging from 0 to 18.The Homoeopathic medicine will be prescribed on the basis of Constitutional totality followed by scoring in GERD Questionnaire.