**7. Epidemiology of infectious esophagitis**

The incident of esophagitis is low in children, but esophagitis is prevalent in adults [19, 20], and reflux esophagitis is the most common type.

The most type of infectious esophagitis is *Candida* esophagitis. Incidence of reflux esophagitis occur monthly in up to 44% of the general population, and up to 10% of people have daily symptoms of esophagitis [20].

In this section, we will look at the international statistics of the diseases and their prevalence in association with other disorders as described and discussed below.

### **7.1 International statistics**

The prevalence of esophagitis is lower than the incidence of the symptoms of reflux sensation.

Patients presenting with symptoms of esophagitis to a General Practitioner (GP) in the United Kingdom (UK) show esophagitis rate in the range of 40–65%. The results of a retrospective review of results of over 800 diagnostic endoscopies in Hampshire, England, UK should that reflux esophagitis accounted for about 23% of all upper gastrointestinal diseases identified [21]. However, the incidence of infectious esophagitis is small in the studied population.

Another review of the Swedish National Register estimated that the prevalence of esophagitis diagnosed via endoscopy is about 5% or less in people aged 55 [22], and prevalence has also been estimated to be about 2% in other reports [23–25]. Again the incidents for infectious esophagitis low as indicated in the reports.
