My dad has had one since I can remember. He takes Prilosec for it. He also gets scoped every 5 or 10 years (I don’t remember) to check for disease or cancer. He never had surgery for it. I don’t know if surgery was ever suggested.

My dad is very overweight. Now and then he gets his weight down. Supposedly, being overweight makes it worse, but I don’t know if he say any difference when he was down 50 pounds.

Some are worse than others.

Definitely. The surgery is warranted in some cases. I personally would try everything else before doing surgery, but I’d guess you have done that.