Gastrointestinal Disorder Treatments

Options for your personalized treatment plan.

We offer many effective treatment options for gastrointestinal (GI) disorders, and no two patients’ treatment plans will be exactly alike. You and your doctor will work together to create a personalized treatment plan that is unique to your condition, needs and priorities for treatment.

Your treatment plan likely will include one or more of the following options:

Lifestyle changes for gastrointestinal disorders

Depending on your GI disorder, you may be able to manage your symptoms through changes in your routine, such as:

• Avoiding foods and drinks that trigger your symptoms, such as those high in caffeine, fat or sugar
• Losing weight and/or maintaining a healthy weight
• Managing stress

We also have a GI-focused psychologist on staff who can help you change behaviors and habits that can lead to symptoms or complications of your GI disorder. Our GI psychologist uses evidence-based behavioral intervention to help you:

• Strengthen your coping skills
• Make positive health changes
• Improve your quality of life
• Improve your health outcomes

The therapeutic model used features goal-focused psychotherapy. It includes cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), gut-directed hypnotherapy and other approaches for helping you develop effective tools to manage your gastrointestinal health.   

Medication management of gastrointestinal disorders

Your doctor may recommend prescription or over-the-counter medications to treat your GI disorder or manage your symptoms.

Depending on your condition and symptoms, you may be eligible to participate in one of our clinical trials. These research studies let you access the latest options in treatment before they’re widely available elsewhere. You and your doctor can discuss whether you’re a good candidate for a clinical trial.

Minimally invasive treatments for gastrointestinal disorders

Our doctors use many of the same procedures to both diagnose and treat GI disorders. These procedures include:

• Upper endoscopy: In this procedure, we use an endoscope (a thin, flexible tube with a camera on the end) to treat disorders of the digestive tract including the stomach, esophagus and duodenum (the first section of the small intestine.)
• Small bowel enteroscopy: We use this procedure to treat bleeding, tumors and other conditions in the small intestine, stomach and esophagus.
• Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP): We use an endoscope and X-rays to locate and treat conditions of the pancreas, pancreatic duct and bile duct, which carries bile (an important liquid the liver makes as part of the digestive process) from the liver to the gallbladder and small intestine. We can relieve blockages in these ducts, including those caused by gallstones.
• Endoscopic ultrasound: Using an endoscope, your doctor determines whether you have gallstones and, if so, if they’re blocking bile ducts.
• Sigmoidoscopy: This endoscopic procedure is similar to a colonoscopy but only involves the rectum and lower colon.
• Colonoscopy: Your doctor will use an endoscope to examine the large intestine and rectum. We use colonoscopy to treat several GI conditions, including diverticulosis, angiodysplasia (a condition that causes swollen blood vessels, leading to bleeding in the colon or stomach) colon polyps (clumps of cells on the lining of the large intestine that may develop into colon cancer and strictures (narrowed areas within the large intestine).
  
  

Surgery for gastrointestinal disorders

If you and your doctor decide surgery is the best treatment option for your GI disorder, we are here for you. We work closely with the colon and rectal surgery team, along with the surgical oncology and general surgery teams, to ensure you receive the care and support you need.

Surgery may be an option for several GI disorders, including:

• Bowel obstruction
• Cancer of the gastrointestinal tract, biliary tract and pancreas
• Diverticulitis (inflammation or infection of pouches called diverticula that can form in the intestines)
• Gallbladder disease
• Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD