Vim & Vigor - Summer 2018 - Community Healthcare - 52

SPOTLIGHT: COMMUNITY HOSPITAL BY ELISE SIMS

Fortunetta
Brack, right,
is feeling much
better these
days after
Russell Pellar,
MD, implanted
LINX, a titanium
ring-shaped
device, to fix
her severe acid
reflux.

Goodbye, GERD
LINX procedure offers patients relief from acid reflux

Fortunetta Brack of Highland was fed up with
being sick. In 2016, she spent New Year's Day,
Easter, Mothers' Day, Labor Day weekend,
Thanksgiving Day and Christmas in the hospital with pneumonia and lung infections.
Ten years earlier, she had been diagnosed with asthma.
Despite being prescribed many medications, she still developed lung infections on a regular basis.
Frustrated, Brack finally went for a second opinion. She
found she had been misdiagnosed. It wasn't asthma causing
the coughing, wheezing and lung infections; it was severe acid
reflux. Armed with the new information, she quickly assembled
a team to help her regain her digestive health.

52

SU M M ER 2 0 1 8

"Acid reflux absolutely interfered with my quality of life,"
Brack says. "Many times I would be eating a meal during family celebrations and it would aggravate my reflux. My lower
esophageal valve was completely open. The acid and bile
in my stomach would reflux almost 100 percent, then aspirate into my lungs. That is why I kept getting lung infections
and pneumonia."
Her new healthcare team at Community Hospital, including
family practitioner Nitin Sardesai, MD, and gastroenterologist Gene Chang, MD, recommended that Brack see general
surgeon Russell Pellar, MD. Pellar was the first surgeon in
Northwest Indiana to offer a new solution for severe acid
reflux called LINX.



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Contents
Vim & Vigor - Summer 2018 - Community Healthcare - Cover1
Vim & Vigor - Summer 2018 - Community Healthcare - Cover2
Vim & Vigor - Summer 2018 - Community Healthcare - Contents
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