Overview

What Is Functional Dyspepsia?

Functional dyspepsia (FD) is the medical term for chronic indigestion. Indigestion is characterized by pain or discomfort in the upper gastrointestinal tract, specifically localizing to the regions of the stomach and small intestine. Functional dyspepsia is often the diagnosis when your physician cannot locate or identify a structural problem or a specific disease in your upper GI tract, despite recurrent or persistent symptoms of indigestion.

Functional dyspepsia can be characterized by two different subtypes:

• Epigastric pain syndrome (EPS)
• Postprandial distress syndrome (PDS)

In the simplest of terms, EPS is characterized by symptoms which are not related to eating a meal. Whereas, PDS is characterized by the onset or worsening of symptoms after a meal. While functional dyspepsia is its own specific type of GI disorder, individuals experiencing dyspeptic symptoms can concurrently experience symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and/or heartburn.