Pediatric Gastroenterology is one of the major subspeciaity of Pediatrics, which specialises in management of diseases of the gut, liver, pancreas and nutritional abnormalities. The various diseases that come under the speciality are usually chronic and evolving conditions and at times requires a multidisciplinary approach.
Pediatric gastroenterology department at ASTER MIMS, Calicut deals with the diagnosis and treatment of following conditions in children of age group from newborn to 17 years.
- All functional GI disorders like constipation, dyspepsia, functional abdominal pain, eating disorders.
- All causes of nutrition and growth issues like failure to thrive, malabsorption syndromes like cystic fibrosis, celiac disease.
- Swallowing disorders and feeding issues especially in neurologically impaired children.
- Chronic diarrhoea, protein-losing enteropathies.
- Allergic and eosinophilic diseases of the gut including cow’s milk protein allergy of infancy (CMPA).
- Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).
- Caustic ingestion and foreign bodies.
- Various causes of both upper and lower GI bleed like esophgeal varices, polyps.
- All luminal GI diseases including achalasia and other motor disorders and infections.
- Inflammatory bowel disease - Crohn´s disease and ulcerative colitis.
- All causes of Pediatric cholestatic liver disease, metabolic liver disorders and genetic conditions affecting the liver.
- Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, acute and chronic hepatitis.
- Gall bladder diseases like gallstones.
- All causes of acute and chronic pancreatitis.
- All types of enteral nutrition solutions for children are provided for acute and chronic conditions.
The department also provides various endoscopy services for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes as mentioned below
Diagnostic: Upper endoscopy, colonoscopy and flex sigmoidoscopy.
Therapeutic: Foreign body removal, stricture dilatation, achalasia balloon dilatation, variceal bleed management, polypectomy and Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube placement including Low profile G tube placement, Nasojejunal tube placement.
Motility studies: Oesophageal manometry, anorectal manometry.
It works closely with the adult gastroenterology team in certain interventional endoscopy procedures like ERCP and stent placement for pancreatic diseases.
