How is functional dyspepsia associated with gastritis?

Functional dyspepsia is a diagnosis of exclusion. This means one has to undergo investigations to exclude other related conditions before arriving at this diagnosis. Examples of such tests include upper endoscopy, ultrasound scan, or CT scan.

Gastritis, on the other hand, is an endoscopical or histological diagnosis which requires visualisation of the stomach inner lining or a biopsy from the stomach lining to look under the microscope. This can appear as red inflamed patches under endoscopy with an increase in the number of inflammatory cells under the microscope.

In general, the diagnosis of functional dyspepsia is only made when an upper endoscopy did not reveal any significant findings. Most often, some form of treatment would have been given the patient at this point. Those patients with persistent symptoms may require further investigations to rule out other problems.

- Dr Quan

A “sensitive stomach” in medical terms means non-ulcer or functional dyspepsia. In this case, indigestion symptoms can affect the quality of life.

Tests such as a gastroscopy (endoscopic examination of the stomach) and ultrasound of the abdomen may not show any specific cause for the symptoms.

‘Gastritis’ is a term often used by the general public to describe indigestion. The medical definition of gastritis refers more specifically to inflammation of the lining of the stomach which is found during gastroscopy.

Some of the causes of gastritis are as a result of smoking, alcohol intake, the use of aspirin or painkillers called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), or due to a specific type of bacterial infection known as Helicobacter Pylori.