Department of Pediatrics
Department of Pediatrics
The Department of Pediatrics

Gastroenterology

Our division advances the treatment of pediatric gastrointestinal and liver disorders through excellent patient care, research, and education.


A Message from the Director

We have clinics that are happily busy and well-staffed with nurses, dieticians, doctors, residents, students, and medical assistants. Our division has strengths in many areas, including the management of problems unique to infants (colic, vomiting, and growth problems), as well as complex pediatric problems 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 leading-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 important 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.

J. Marc Rhoads, MD
Division Director

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