MSN.com had this as one of their headlines tonight. “GERD Not Limited to Grownups”. The actual article came from this website. http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=607428
I appreciate the PR about GERD but wish they had not worded some things the way they did. I wrote an email to the editors on the HealthDay site. I hope I wasn’t out of line, but I found their misuse of “colic” so very frustrating. Here’s what I said:
Thank you for bringing this subject to more people’s attention. It is shocking how many doctors do not properly diagnose infant reflux, so many babies suffer when they could actually be receiving treatment for their pain. That was the case for our son. We were told for months that he had “colic” when he actually had GERD and MSPI (milk soy protein intolerance). It took him losing weight and becoming diagnosed as “Failure to Thrive” to finally get proper medical care.
So, your article is very helpful in making more people aware of infant reflux. However, you frequently misused the word “colic” where you should have said “reflux” in this article. For example, you said “COLIC is a normal physiologic process that can occur throughout the day in healthy infants and children. Most episodes are brief and are typically confined to the lower esophagus…” That should have been “reflux”. Reflux is a normal process, colic is a description of behaviour. Even if somehow medically the word “colic” is appropriate to use, the public understanding of “colic” is a crying and miserable baby, not a physiological process of bringing the stomach contents back up.
You also said “COLIC can worsen and become GERD when the stomach’s contents move into the upper esophagus.” Again, “reflux” seems to be the correct term.
The third place you misused the word is: “Diagnosing GERD first involves eliminating other conditions with similar symptoms, such as testing for milk or food allergies, COLIC or inflammation of the esophagus, and finding out if there is a family history of GERD.” There is no test for COLIC. COLIC does not inflame the esophagus.
There is no Disease called Colic. It is a description of symptoms and behaviours — many of which babies with reflux display, of course. Most doctors lump too many crying, distressed babies as having “colic” instead of pursuing a more current medical diagnosis – GERD or protein intolerances.
Two other excellent sources of information about infant reflux are http://www.marci-kids.com (a hospital website) and http://www.colicsolved.com (a pediatric GI doctor).
Thanks for listening.
Dianne Wood
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Excellent work 
way to go mama!!!