In Japan it is reported that many patients with reflux oesophagitis are relatively mild and do not usually require strong treatment, and even H2 receptor antagonists are considered to demonstrate sufficient healing effects. Haruma thinks that the first choice should be PPI in principle which has the best therapeutic effect as the medical guideline if a patient has a strong reflux symptom such as heartburn or is diagnosed with severe reflux oesophagitis (Grade C or D according to the Los Angels Classification) as a result of the upper gastrointestinal endoscopic test. Later, after healing is confirmed at 8 weeks of treatment or after the subjective symptoms have been improved, the dose of PPI should be reduced to half to transfer to maintenance therapy. On the other hand, if a patient has mild subjective symptoms or develops mild reflux oesophagitis (Grade A or B according to the Los Angels Classification) as a result of the upper gastrointestinal endoscopic test, only about 10% of such patients aggravate in the long-run and some patients heal in the natural course. Therefore, considering that Japanese gastric-acid secretion is lower than Westerners, they recommend that antacids such as H2 receptor antagonists or sodium alginates is used to treat symptoms as they appear along with the improvement in the lifestyle. As mentioned above, lafutidine that strongly suppresses acid secretion during the daytime from the initial phase of treatment is expected to demonstrate sufficient effect in treatment of mild reflux oesophagitis similar to the conventional H2 receptor antagonists.