Amy Nett: I think if someone is diagnosed with esophagitis, you want to do a full array of gut testing here. We want to figure out if there are predisposing factors that can be contributing to the esophagitis, so you’re going to want to do the usual small intestinal bacterial overgrowth breath testing. I would include a test for Helicobacter pylori. You want to do stool testing as well just to look for dysbiosis, parasites, or anything that could be contributing to some sort of gut microbial disruption. Something that you maybe able to target there.
I think that’s always going to be the first step when we hear that anything’s going on with the gut, and again, that’s going to include esophagitis. You’re going to think about what could be contributing to reflux. That’s always a good place to start really with almost any GI symptoms, esophagitis included.