Liz's AR Pillow.
I have three beautiful daughters and a son on the way. All of them had acid reflux or GERD or gastroesophageal reflux disease (WebMD) and we'll see about the little guy. The experience with our first was hands down one of the low points of having kids: you're stressed, sleep deprived, doing your best to comfort a little one and totally failing. Plus projectile vomiting, coughing, wheezing, possible stunted growth... Fortunately, kids usually grow out of it. Until then, ug.
Liz Goutevenier lost her niece when she drowned in her own stomach contents. Things like that have a way of making you solve things and Liz did: she made the AR Pillow, a 30 degree inclination with a comfy strap to keep the little one from sliding down.
Liz's AR Pillow is beautifully simple: gravity keeps acid from coming up. This just makes sense and is unsurprisingly supported by a bunch of research.
Let's contrast that elegant simplicity with research on proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) in kids. My wife and I declined that option:
- "PPIs are not effective in reducing GERD symptoms in infants. Placebo-controlled trials in older children are lacking... [E]vidence supporting the safety of PPIs is lacking."
- "Long-term inhibition of gastric acid secretion leads to [lots of bad things] and increased infections...but pediatric studies are limited."
- "[E]fficacy of PPI treatment of newborns and infants through 11 months of age for GERD has not been demonstrated" with the exception of one study.
- "The use of PPIs in the management of infants with excessive crying, based on a presumptive diagnosis of GERD, remains a common practice among pediatric caregivers despite the lack of any evidence-based treatment efficacy or utility in these patients."
- "Non-specific gastric inflammation in children is associated with proton pump inhibitor treatment for more than 6 weeks."
- "[T]rials and observational studies are still needed to clarify the efficacy and safety of PPIs in the paediatric population."
So overall, PPIs don't work or don't work very well in young kids, they're prescribed anyway and they might do bad things. There are situations where PPIs are warranted, namely in erosive esophagitis of children older than one year. Outside of that, I'm not sure why they're prescribed. Does anyone else remember the marketing effort Prevakids?
Get Liz's AR Pillow here.