GI Insights

Many patients undergo surgery to help manage their inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but many questions still surround the surgical management of IBD. When should a patient receive surgery? How do we know which procedure is best? And what do we need to keep in mind before, during, and after a patient's surgery? Joining Dr. Peter Buch to help address those and other questions is colorectal surgeon Dr. Amanda Ayers.

Predicting which patients with IBD will develop complications allows for much better medication choices. But how do we go about predicting that risk? Joining Dr. Peter Buch to tackle this topic is Dr. Corey Siegel, Section Chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

The approach to managing pancreatic necrosis has evolved over the past several years. To learn more, Dr. Peter Buch speaks with Dr. Christopher J. DiMaio, who’s one of the lead authors of the clinical practice update from the American Gastroenterological Association focusing on the management of pancreatic necrosis.

Despite significant advances in Crohn’s disease therapy, sometimes patients have no other option but surgery. So to learn more about surgery for Crohn’s disease, Dr. Peter Buch speaks with Dr. Randolph Steinhagen, Chief of the Division of Colorectal Surgery and the Director for the Colon and Rectal Fellowship Program at Mount Sinai.

Many of our patients suffer from bile acid diarrhea. In fact, it’s estimated that about a third of the patients with functional diarrhea or irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea actually have bile acid malabsorption or bile acid diarrhea, and one in every five adolescents with chronic diarrhea have evidence of bile acid diarrhea based on very simple blood tests. But despite its prevalence, bile acid diarrhea is often difficult to diagnose, which is why Dr. Peter Buch and Dr. Michael Camilleri from the Mayo Clinic come together to discuss key diagnostic and treatment strategies for bile acid diarrhea.

There are many questions and considerations that arise when managing patients with eosinophilic esophagitis, which is exactly what the 2020 AGA guidelines seek to address. Joining Dr. Neil Nandi to walk us through those guidelines and how we can apply them to the care of our patients with eosinophilic esophagitis is Dr. Kristle Lynch, Associate Professor Clinical Medicine Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gastric cancer is rare, but not as rare as we think. This makes screening and surveilling patients at high risk extremely important, but with no current guidelines available on how to do so, what steps can we take to make a difference in gastric cancer outcomes? To find out, Dr. Peter Buch speaks with Dr. Joo Ha Hwang, a Professor of Medicine at the Stanford University Medical Center who shares his insights on the early detection of gastrointestinal malignancies.

Many studies focus on the impact of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis in adult patients, but what about our youngest patients? To learn more about how we can treat our pediatric patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, Dr. Peter Buch speaks with Dr. Jeffrey Hyams, one of the world’s leading experts in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease.

Over the years, there has been an immense focus on defining what really constitutes a high-quality endoscopy, but many questions still remain regarding what that actually looks like in practice and how we can ensure quality in endoscopy units. That’s why Director of Ambulatory Services and Digestive Disease at Yale School of Medicine Dr. Hamita Sachar joins Dr. Peter Buch to help address some of those questions.

Are patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) at increased risk for COVID-19 infection? And what should we recommend for an IBD patient in remission who tests positive for COVID-19 versus a patient with active disease? These are just some of the questions that have arisen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the questions Dr. Peter Buch explores with Dr. Russell Cohen, Director of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center and Co-Director of the Advanced IBD Fellowship Program at the University of Chicago School of Medicine.