Gastroenterology

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The Digestive Health Center of Wake Forest Baptist Health offers the region’s most experienced experts in digestive diseases and the most advanced equipment and procedures to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal diseases. Our Endoscopy Suite has state-of-the art equipment, a highly trained nursing staff, a full-service anesthesia team and an environment sensitive to patient comfort and privacy. More than 16,000 endoscopic procedures are performed each year. Patients come to the center from throughout the Southeast with digestive problems that range from the common to the very unusual and complex. 

The Digestive Health Center consists of 4 distinct areas:

• The Gastroenterology Clinic,an outpatient clinic of North Carolina Baptist Hospital,where consultations take place in a comfortable outpatient setting where gastrointestinal disorders are diagnosed and treated by our faculty;

• The Endoscopy Suite, where endoscopy and colonoscopy procedures are performed and the small bowel is examined by capsule endoscopy;
  

• The Gastrointestinal Neuromuscular Disorders Center, where acid pH, contraction, and electrical disorders of the esophagus and stomach are diagnosed by 24-hour pH and impedance monitoring, electrogastrography, esophageal manometry, anal rectal manometry, and breath tests; and

• The Advanced Endoscopy Center, where the most complex endoscopic procedures are performed. The Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Disorders (HBP) Service, one of the most active in the state, currently performs approximately 700 therapeutic Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) procedures and 1,200 Endoscopic Ultrasounds (EUS) annually. ERCP provides access for diagnosis and therapy of diseases involving the bile ducts, gallbladder and pancreas. The EUS Service is one of the largest in the Southeast. EUS procedures examine the deeper layers of the gastrointestinal tract and adjacent lymph nodes to detect and biopsy masses. Among the unique services offered at the Digestive Health Center are combined EUS and ERCP under a single sedation at a single visit for evaluation of jaundice due to pancreas or biliary diseases.
  

Special Endoscopy services such as Endoscopic Mucosal Resection (EMR) for large polyps and Barrett's lesions and Double Ballon Enterosocpy (DBE) for occult bleeding are also services provided in the Advanced Endoscopy Center.