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