Dyspepsia means “difficult digestion” and is the medical term often used to refer to indigestion, which instead has a more general meaning and encompasses a multitude of different disorders of the upper abdomen.
Unlike simple episodic indigestion, the symptoms of dyspepsia, although not constantly present, tend to disappear and recur frequently over long periods.
Dyspepsia is a pathological condition characterized by localized pain or discomfort in the epigastrium, more or less associated with a sense of fullness and anorexia.
We speak of organic, or secondary, dyspepsia when it is a consequence of other pathological conditions and thus distinguish it from functional dyspepsia, so called because in this case the presence of an organic, biochemical, or structural cause cannot be recognized.
