WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Helping patients with chronic heartburn

January 11, 2012

For more than 20 years, Kelley Morisette couldn't eat without feeling the pain and discomfort of heartburn and acid reflux.

"A lot of times, like as I was eating, not even half way through a meal, the food would start coming back up," Morisette said.

She has gastroesophageal reflux disease or GERD. She changed her diet and turned to medications.

"They didn't work and I was taking maximum strength of all the different drugs," she said.

So she turned to doctors at Keck Medical Center of USC who were testing an experimental device. A small band of magnetic beads is surgically implanted. It's placed around the valve at the end of the esophagus to keep stomach acid from getting in.

"The force of those magnetic beads coming together puts increased force on that weak valve which helps keep it closed to prevent the reflux," explained Dr. John Lipham of Keck Medical Center of USC.

The surgery takes about 15 minutes. Doctors put the patient under general anesthesia before making five small incisions to insert the device.

"Most of the pain is gone within a few days after the surgery. Patients seem to get back on to a regular diet quicker than they did with conventional surgery," Lipham said.

Lipham says his patients haven't had any major complications with the device. They may have some difficulty swallowing at first, but that doesn't last long.

It's been two years since Morisette had the implant.

"I don't take any medicine," she said. "I can eat anything in the world I want. I mean anything."

Including oranges-- something she would never have enjoyed before the surgery.

The FDA doesn't have to follow the advice of the advisory panel, but usually does.