From the Past Chair and Vice Chair of the WGO Foundation World Digestive Health Day (WDHD) was initiated several years ago by the World Gastroenterology Organisation in order to highlight important global issues in digestive diseases. As WDHD has evolved over the years it has developed from a one day event to a year-long campaign which engages with gastroenterologists, doctors, health care professionals and the general public on many aspects of the prevalence, prevention, diagnosis and management of common gastrointestinal and liver symptoms and disorders. Through direct collaboration with our member societies in over 100 countries around the world and with the support of other professional societies with similar interests, nongovernmental agencies, governments and industry, we have helped to promote understanding and raise awareness on these issues. It may come as a surprise to many that, up until this year, WGO has not addressed one of the most common gastrointestinal symptoms in the world: heartburn. In this handbook, Professor David Armstrong and his team of international experts set out to rectify this omission. This is an opportune time to address this symptom and its related disorders given that we now have so much information on the varying prevalence, clinical presentation and impact of heartburn in different areas of the world. Indeed, it turns out that heartburn and its related syndrome, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), represents a wonderful example of variations in disease expression, not only in different populations, but also between individuals in the same population. These variations have considerable implications for the assessment and management of heartburn; for example, the approach to a middle aged male from Western Europe or North America with a long history of heartburn will be very different to how a young female from China will be investigated and managed. We all have much to learn from these geographical and inter-individual variations in disease phenotype associated with a single, though highly prevalent, symptom: heartburn. This very same symptom provides a perfect platform for the CASCADE approach developed and honed by the WGO guidelines committee over the past decades and, through this handbook, the task force presents a monograph on heartburn that will resonate with WGO members worldwide. On behalf of the WGO Foundation we congratulate Professor Armstrong and the 2015 Steering Committee and fellow authors on this wonderful work which we hope that you will not only enjoy but find helpful. Sincerely, Eamonn Quigley MD, FRCP, FACP, FACG, FRCPI Past Chair, WGO Foundation Richard Hunt, MD Vice Chair, WGO Foundation World Digestive Health Day WDHD May 29, 2015 WGO HANDBOOK HEARTBURN: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 5
WDHD-2015-handbook-final
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