Expert Gastrointestinal care that soothes your stomach and your worries.

GERD is a severe, chronic acid reflux condition in which the muscle connecting your stomach to your esophagus (tube connecting your throat to your stomach) is weak or relaxes abnormally, allowing acidic stomach contents to back up into your esophagus. While rarely life threatening, GERD can lead to internal bleeding, ulcers, strictures, or esophageal cancer, if not detected early.

A likely cause of GERD is hiatal hernia (your stomach pushing up through your diaphragm muscle). Other risk factors for GERD include obesity, pregnancy, smoking, asthma, dry mouth, diabetes, and connective tissue disorder.

The most common symptoms of GERD are as follows:

• Heartburn, sometimes spreading to your throat and causing a sore throat, hoarseness, chronic cough, asthma, or the feeling of a lump in your throat
• Regurgitation, a feeling of acid backed up in your esophagus
• A feeling that food may be trapped behind your breastbone
• Nausea after eating
• Difficulty swallowing
• Chest pain

If you experience severe or frequent GERD symptoms, schedule an appointment with your doctor, as you may need diagnostic testing.

Esophageal Motility is the process of moving food through the esophagus and esophageal motility disorders occur when your esophagus doesn’t move together properly. One of the most common and treatable types of esophageal motility disorder is achalasia.

The symptoms of esophageal motility disorders are caused by food moving too quickly or slowly, backwards, or not moving through your digestive tract at all. Symptoms depend on your affected muscles and can include the following:

• Acid reflux
• Difficulty swallowing
• Heartburn
• Nausea
• Swallowing disorders
• Vomiting / regurgitation

If you have severe or frequent symptoms, schedule an appointment with your physician, as you may require diagnostic testing.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD can affect people at any stage of life, disrupting their personal, professional, and social experiences. We work together with our IBD patients to provide them with the best medical and surgical care. Our IBD Center treats all types of IBD conditions, including:

• Crohn’s Disease
• Ulcerative Colitis
• Indeterminate Colitis
• Pouchitis Microscopic
• Enterocolitis; Lymphocytic and Collagenous Enterocolitis
• Celiac Disease
• Eosinophilic Gastroenteritis
• Diarrhea

IBD symptoms range from mild to severe with most people experiencing the milder ones.

• Abdominal distention
• Abdominal fullness, gas, bloating
• Abdominal pain that
• comes and goes
• is reduced or goes away after a bowel movement
• occurs after meals
• can wake you up
• Chronic and frequent constipation, usually accompanied by pain
• Family history of Crohn's and Colitis
• Chronic and frequent diarrhea, usually accompanied by pain
• Emotional distress
• Depression
• Loss of appetite

Irritable bowel syndrome or IBS is also known as spastic colon, intestinal neurosis, and nervous indigestion. It refers to a disorder of the lower intestinal tract that leads to abdominal pain and abnormal bowel movements.

The cause of IBS is not known, but it can occur after an intestinal infection (post-infectious IBS). IBS symptoms may be worse in patients who also have stress or mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression. That said, these conditions do not cause IBS.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) symptoms may include:

• Abdominal distention
• Abdominal fullness, gas, bloating
• Abdominal pain that
• comes and goes
• is reduced or goes away after a bowel movement
• occurs after meals
• Chronic and frequent constipation, usually accompanied by pain
• Chronic and frequent diarrhea, usually accompanied by pain
• Emotional distress
• Depression
• Loss of appetite

At MedStar Health, our highly skilled team diagnoses and treats all aspects of diseases affecting the pancreas and biliary tract, including pancreatitis, gallstones, and pancreatic cancer. Our multidisciplinary approach ensures each patient receives the best care for their unique condition.

What Are Pancreatic and Biliary Diseases?

Pancreatic diseases are a set of conditions affecting the pancreas, an organ located behind the stomach that produces juices and hormones that help with food digestion and blood sugar regulation. Biliary diseases affect the bile ducts and gallbladder, which work to produce and transport bile, a substance that aids the body in digesting fat and transporting waste.

Some biliary and pancreatic diseases are congenital, while others are related to injuries, viruses, or alcohol abuse. In many cases, biliary and pancreatic diseases can be severe and dangerous for the patient, and require immediate and expert medical care.

Symptoms

Pancreatic conditions often produce no symptoms at all, but when they do, they most commonly result in pain in the upper-middle part of the abdomen that travels to the mid-back. If diabetes or weight loss occurs simultaneously with the onset of upper abdominal pain, pancreatic problems are the likely source.

Biliary diseases often produce abdominal pain in the upper right side, dark urine, fever, itching, jaundice, nausea, vomiting, or pale-colored stools.

Diagnosis

Our physicians use a variety of procedures to diagnose biliary and pancreatic diseases, including cholecystography (a procedure in which the patient swallows a contrast dye before a series of X-rays, allowing for the detection of gallstones and other abnormalities), CT scans, and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP).

In ERCP, a thin, flexible instrument known as a duodenoscope is inserted through the mouth, down the esophagus, and into the stomach and small intestine. After this, a contrast dye is injected through the duodenoscope, allowing the physician to take X-rays and sometimes even to remove the complication in the same procedure.

Treatment

There is no cookie-cutter approach to caring for patients with often complex pancreatic and biliary diseases, though both are often treated with similar techniques, including surgery and endoscopy. At MedStar Health, our program brings together a multidisciplinary team who work together to determine the best treatment plan for each of our patients. By providing comprehensive, individualized care, we can achieve the best possible outcomes.