LINX surgery allows father and daughter to enjoy Thanksgiving
Dr. Jodi Lech and her father Ron Petri both have a band of titanium magnets implanted around their lower esophagus to prevent reflux from the stomach.
Dr. Lech holds the LINX band. Each bead has five newtons of magnetic force.
A cutaway graphic of where the LINX band is implanted.
Dr. Blair Anderson Jobe demonstrates how the LINX band allows food to pass but prevents back flow from the stomach.
One half of the diagnostic “bravo system” that’s inserted along the throat to gauge pH levels and frequency of acid flowback.
Dr. Lech holds the other half of the bravo system: a device that records button presses when a person experiences pain, which data is paired with the bravo insert.
Dr. Jodi Lech and her father, Ron Petri, share a magnetic bond. Both suffered through burning, acidic pains of heartburn and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) before having a small band of magnetic beads implanted at the top of each of their stomachs. Lech, director of Pharmacy Clinical Services, looked to her own employer – the Allegheny Health Network – for a fix to the often arresting and debilitating pains. Now, the two will share their second Thanksgiving together without having to worry what’s on their plates.
“I was self-medicating and kind of going through the motions with it, but it was getting really bad. This is serious stuff. And the problem with people taking over the counter medications, or taking some of a family member’s antacids, is they’re not aware of the mixing of medicines and what that can do to you,” Lech said.
Lech’s 66-year-old father was covering up symptoms for 15 years with increasingly stronger prescriptions, but none of them were solving the problem.
“Antacids, or the proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), they take care of heartburn symptoms, but heartburn is the main symptom of GERD. And that is, the stomach, where it connects to your esophagus – that ‘gate’ isn’t closing and is allowing acids back up into your throat. PPIs can reduce the amount of acid in your stomach, but if that gate isn’t closing, either way you’re going to have it coming back up no matter how many pills you take,” the 40-year-old Lech said.
Lech decided that she would solve the gate problem by having doctors at the Esophageal and Lung Institute in McMurray implant the LINX titanium magnet bead system around the lowest portion of her esophagus.
“These beads allow the muscles of the throat to push food past, and then the magnets come together to resist gastric pressure and regurgitation that would otherwise be flowing back up,” says Dr. Blair Jobe, director of esophageal surgery who performed the procedures on Lech and Petri in June 2013. Jobe’s practice at 160 Gallery Drive is one of only four in Pennsylvania approved to perform the LINX implant procedure.
“This LINX system has been FDA-approved for a little over two years now, and there have only been about 2,000 procedures done world-wide. There have been only two instances of complications, and they were both in Europe at the same hospital, and there have been no instances of device failure ever recorded. This is a safe outpatient procedure for those with chronic heartburn, regurgitation and an overlying dependence on medications,” Jobe says, adding that “it’s naive to think long-term usage of medicine will solve a problem like this.”
Jobe says chronic use of medication, even if it does mask symptoms to a tolerable point, can become risky for some patients.
“Studies show that constant, continual use of PPIs prevent absorption of calcium and magnesium. That’s troubling for anyone, and particularly pre-menopausal women and those with weak bone density,” he says. Worse yet, is letting it go altogether without prescriptions or a diagnosis. For Ron, his self-diagnosis wasn’t helping.
“I thought it was cancer. I do painting, body work on cars. So I thought when doctors had found erosion of my throat along with scarring that this is where it was headed,” Petri said.
Fortunately, it was not the case. But, Dr. Jobe is quick to note Petri’s fears weren’t without merit.
“Chronic heartburn, the acid coming up and splashing the throat constantly – it’s a risk factor for esophageal cancer. And even if you’re taking medications to mitigate acid, they do not stop reflux. And those fluids can end up in your lungs.”
So for Lech and her father, the LINX implants deftly solved two problems: the ongoing pain was no more, and they would no longer worry about getting prescriptions and the complications they might bring about.
“The day after, I was out of the hospital: zero pain. I was able to sleep lying down again. It was two months later that I was eating normal again,” Petri said.
“We emptied our garden of tomatoes after the surgery. That, pasta, onions – dad could go back to eating these things again,” Lech said.
Candidates for the procedure must undergo a two-day self-monitoring process along with other tests. The two-day monitoring uses what’s called a “bravo system” to evaluate pH levels and how far acidic fluids are climbing back up. The two-piece system has a doctor placing a sensor down and along the throat. Patients are then given a remote to press to log symptoms or pain. That, along with data from the “dipstick” device, provides doctors a clearer picture of where and how often acids are coming back up from the stomach.
“And don’t worry, there’s no retrieval process,” Lech says of the pill-sized transmitter. She said the process was painless, and the surgery itself – five small incisions in the abdomen – was taken in stride as well.
“It’s the best thing I have ever done. It’s like spanx for your sphincter!” she says with a laugh. She only wished she and her father had done it sooner.
“I told myself when I was 50, I was going to do something about all the pain,” Petri says, “but it took my daughter experiencing the same thing for me get on top of this.”