Yes, Lucas’ h. hernia was found through endoscopy. Endoscopy does not always find h. hernias– Christine on these forums (kevieb) her daughter had a large h. hernia and TWO endoscopies did not find hers. But, they can show up through endoscopy. I have heard that some docs say that if there is a h. hernia it will show up through an upper gi or barium swallow, in our case it simply wasn’t true. The ugi showed severe reflux, but did not show the h. hernia.
The h. hernia finding changed our plans in the sense that it opened up the possibility of surgery for hernia repair, the fundoplication surgery. However, the surgeon felt Lucas wasn’t a good candidate, since he was gaining weight well and had not yet begun to walk. I think you will find some surgeons won’t do this surgery before walking age unless they are FTT or having other serious medical complications. Christine’s daughter was FTT and had the fundo at 10 mos. But just knowing about the hernia has helped me handle a lot of what’s going on. We proceeded as usual after the surgeon recommended against surgery, but we know WHY things are happening the way they are. And it changed our expectations so we weren’t crushed that he didn’t “outgrow” the reflux with walking and age. We expected that he wouldn’t, since they don’t outgrow the h. hernia.
I can’t remember if I told you this already though, I do think finding the h. hernia stopped all of us from investigating further the food problems….which was a disservice to us, but we are finally getting around to that now.
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