Gastroenterology

Examples of these diseases are abdominal pain, lactose and fructose malabsorption, reflux, vomiting, eosinophilic oesophagitis, H. pylori infection and other gastritis, coeliac disease (gluten intolerance), Meckel’s diverticulum, short-bowel syndrome with enteral and parenteral nutrition, chronic inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, constipation, hepatitis (liver inflammation) and pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas), failure to thrive, cystic fibrosis and so on.

Pediatric gastroenterology requires extensive technical equipment (ultrasound, breath test, pH-metry, gastroscopy, colonoscopy, sweat test, rectoscopy, rectal biopsy, liver biopsy) and close collaboration with pediatric surgeons, pediatric radiologists, child psychologists, nutritional counselling and so on. The patients are often seriously ill and need day-clinic and inpatient treatment. The staffing effort is enormous. These services are not well represented in the current billing system. Gastroenterology, like oncology, is a discipline that is better placed in a hospital. For this reason we decided against a specialised gastroenterology practice. We offer gastroenterology only within a certain scope for the patients of our own practice.