Gastroenterology

We have happily busy and well-staffed clinics with nurses, dietitians, doctors, residents, students, and medical assistants. Our division has strengths in many areas, including managing problems unique to infants (colic, vomiting, and growth problems) and complex pediatric issues, including short bowel syndrome and liver transplantation. In older children, we see many with abdominal pain, dyspepsia, acute and chronic diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease, vomiting, and gastroesophageal reflux. Intestinal rehabilitation and liver transplantation are two strengths of our program, and we are the service that follows children on nutritional support and after transplantation.

In conjunction with the Texas Liver Center, we are part of a team of nationally renowned medical experts who are committed to providing children and adolescents with cutting-edge medical care in a compassionate environment.

Our gastroenterologists perform many procedures, usually with anesthesiology support, including endoscopy, esophageal pH-impedance probe testing, colonoscopy, breath hydrogen analysis, percutaneous gastrostomy placement, polyp removal, foreign body removal, therapeutic endoscopy (to stop bleeding, variceal ligation), esophageal and anorectal manometry, and liver biopsy. Current areas of active basic and translational research include necrotizing enterocolitis, infantile colic, gastrointestinal and liver involvement in mitochondrial disorders, and functional dyspepsia. Some of our most essential collaborators include pediatric surgeons, neurologists, and neonatologists, and our research utilizes core facilities at U.T. and Baylor through the NIH-Funded Digestive Diseases Center.

The Division has an active fellowship program with six fellows involved in clinical and basic research. Dr. Essam Imseis is board-certified in Pediatric Transplant Hepatology and leads the liver clinic and intestinal failure clinic; he also directs the fellowship program. Dr. Fernando Navarro heads the Inflammatory Bowel Disease section. Five members of the division were elected by Houstonian Magazine as Top Doctors in 2018. The division is a member of the national quality improvement consortium for pediatric inflammatory bowel disease called Improve Care Now. Dr. Melissa Van Arsdall leads endoscopy innovation and heads clinical care and new therapies for functional bowel disease. Dr. Wallace (“Skip”) Gleason provides a historical perspective to our profession, having been active in the field for more than 40 years; he is also the Director of the medical school JAMP program, which assists exceptional candidates who need financial assistance. Dr. Yuying Liu heads our research lab, which investigates probiotics’ effect on autoimmune diseases. Ms. Nicole Fatheree is the Research Coordinator for a trial of probiotics for children with autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Marc Rhoads (who heads the Division) actively sees patients, participates in clinical and laboratory research, and is an associate editor for the World Journal of Gastroenterology and the journal Nutrients.