Reflux – The Truth About LES

The truth about LES. With regard to esophageal motility, one of the issues that many patients often bring up is, “My esophageal sphincter pressure of the lower esophageal sphincter is normal, why is it I still have symptoms?”  There is a very simple explanation for this phenomenon.  Everything is about the relative strength of the sphincter compared to the pressure coming from the stomach known as the gastric yield pressure.  Your LES sphincter needs to be able to generate four millimeters of mercury worth of pressure above the gastric yield pressure.  This means that you could technically have a normal pressure of the LES sphincter, but it’s not normal enough to prevent reflux, because of an even higher gastric yield pressure.