How severe is my reflux?
Millions of people in the UK experience the symptoms of reflux at least once every week. For many this is linked to something they have eaten and settles quickly, but for others the symptoms are more frequent and many use PPI medication daily to manage it. There is a smaller group for whom their symptoms are much worse and have a major impact on their quality of life every day, interfering with their eating habits, exercise and sleep.
It can be difficult for people to gauge how severe their symptoms are compared to other reflux sufferers. ‘Are my symptoms normal or severe?’, ‘Is my reflux doing permanent damage?’ and ‘should I be considering surgery?’ are common questions that people are asking themselves.
It’s helpful therefore to have an objective basis upon to decide how severe your reflux symptoms are, and the reflux health related quality of life questionnaire (HRQL) is designed to do this.
Over many years and based on thousands of responses it has developed to become a robust tool that can be used to grade the severity of your reflux. It is also structured in a way that enables us to measure both your digestive symptoms (heartburn type symptoms) and LPR symptoms (for example those occurring in the throat).
We use this questionnaire to identify people with more severe symptoms who would typically benefit from surgery. In fact, we collect this questionnaire from every patient to whom we recommend surgery as part of their pre-operative screening. We also do so at regular intervals after surgery to monitor the improvement in symptoms.
You can take this test completely free of charge here. At the end you’ll get a reflux score and an indication of whether it is low, medium or high.
We recommend a private consultation to discuss your results.
