Gastroenterology Specialty Clinics
Director: Grace H Elta, M.D.
The multidisciplinary Digestive Health Center offers coordinated and comprehensive evaluation and treatment for adult and pediatric patients with digestive disorders. Located in the Medical Procedures Unit, the Digestive Health Center provides advanced GI diagnostic and therapeutic facilities that support a multidisciplinary physician team, including Internal Medicine Gastroenterologists, Pediatric Gastroenterologists, and Gastrointestinal Radiologists and Surgeons. An additional component of the Digestive Health Center is the Gastrointestinal Physiology and Manometry Laboratory. The laboratory offers diagnostic studies to evaluate motor and other functional abnormalities of the entire gastrointestinal tract including the pancreas and hepatobiliary systems.
The Digestive Health Center offers the following services:
Endoscopic Ultrasound:- Highly accurate for staging cancers of the esophagus, stomach, pancreas and rectum
- Best diagnostic tool for endocrine tumors of the pancreas
- Provides the most specific image of gastrointestinal submucosal lesions
- Used to guide needle biopsies of submucosal lesions
- Definitively diagnoses bleeding in the small intestine
- Used to cauterize bleeding sites in the small intestine
- Used to biopsy lesions in the small intestine
- Sensitive (>90%) for the presence of Helicobacter Pylori (HP) and can confirm the presence of HP or establish the eradication of HP after a course of medical therapy
- An appropriate noninvasive diagnostic alternative to be used in patients with documented ulcers who were inadvertently not tested at the time of endoscopy or upper gastrointestinal series, or in patients with a documented history of peptic ulcer disease and recurrent symptoms
- Much less expensive than upper GI endoscopy with biopsy
- Requires ingestion of a small dose of radioisotope (1 muCi-less than the radiation exposure of 1 chest x-ray) and consequently is currently not recommended for children or pregnant women
- Noninvasive diagnostic study of human gastric pacemaker activities in various motility disorders affecting the stomach
- Unique tool to evaluate patients with obscure causes of nausea, vomiting, or gastroparesis
- Used to aid in selecting therapeutic drugs for treatment
- Diagnostic ERCP for gallbladder and bile duct disease, pancreatic disease, Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction, and pancreaticobiliary manometry studies for idiopathic hepatobiliary pain
- Therapeutic ERCP includes sphincterotomy, placement of tubes/drains/stents (including expandable stents), dilation, removal/mechanical lithotripsy of stones
- Used for video endoscopy in the biliary tree
- Diagnostic and therapeutic uses in patients with unexplained symptoms of cholangitis
- Used in the evaluation of obsure GI bleeding
- May also be helpful in some patients with polyposis syndrome or Crohn's disease
- Esophageal - to restore the lumen of the esophagus and make palliation of malignant esophageal strictures less traumatic and better tolerated
- Biliary - to maintain patency of the pancreatic/biliary tree
- Enteric - to maintain patency of the duodenum or colon
Appointment Number: 734-936-9250
Clinic location:
University Hospital
1500 East Medical Center Drive
Floor 2, Room 2B355, Reception: 2B355 University Hospital
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-5051
Phone: 734-936-9250
Fax: 734-615-2514
Maps & Directions:
Street Map
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