GERD Severity Score Calculator

GERD-Q is a validated, self-administered questionnaire designed to help identify probable gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) from symptoms alone, without requiring endoscopy, and this calculator reproduces its scoring exactly. It was developed and validated by Jones and colleagues, who published the questionnaire in 2009 as a primary-care diagnostic and management tool. Six questions ask about the past seven days on a 0-3 scale. Four are "positive" symptoms that count toward the score at face value -- heartburn frequency, regurgitation frequency, sleep disturbance from those symptoms, and days using over-the-counter heartburn medication -- while two are "negative" symptoms that are reverse-scored (subtracted from 3, so 0 days becomes 3 points and 3 days becomes 0 points): epigastric (upper abdominal) pain and nausea, since frequent occurrence of either makes a non-reflux cause more likely and should reduce the score's support for a GERD diagnosis. All six contribute to a combined total from 0 to 18, and the original validation studies found a cutoff of 8 or higher reasonably predictive of GERD (published sensitivity around 65%, specificity around 71% -- meaningful screening performance, but well short of certain, so a score below 8 does not rule GERD out and a score of 8 or higher does not confirm it on its own).

This calculator also reports a separate impact score built only from sleep disturbance and OTC medication use -- epigastric pain and nausea don't count toward it at all, since it's meant to capture how much reflux specifically is disrupting daily life, not overall symptom burden -- plus a severity tier and a treatment-level suggestion. Both the severity tier and the treatment-level output are this calculator's own simplified illustrations, not outputs GERD-Q itself produces or a formal guideline recommendation for any specific patient. Severity is deliberately scored from the Positive Symptom Score alone (the four heartburn/regurgitation/sleep/OTC-medication items, 0-12) rather than from the combined GERD-Q Score -- the two reverse-scored items exist to flag a likely non-reflux cause and pull the *diagnosis* score down, not to measure how severe a patient's actual reflux symptoms are, so basing severity on the combined score would let heavy epigastric pain or nausea (unrelated symptoms) mask a high reflux burden, or let their absence alone push a symptom-free patient into a "mild" tier. Severity then maps onto the treatment-level suggestion (lifestyle changes, as-needed antacids, a daily PPI trial, or specialist referral).