Functional GI Disorders Clinic helps patients with complex GI conditions
Shikib Mostamand, M.D., pediatric gastroenterologist at Children’s National Hospital, shares what makes the FGID clinic model unique.
Children’s National Hospital has started a multi-disciplinary Functional GI Disorders (FGID) Clinic to treat patients with complex gastroenterology disorders and illnesses that are unique to children. Shikib Mostamand, M.D., pediatric gastroenterologist at Children’s National shares what makes this clinic model unique.
What is the purpose of this clinic?
The purpose of this clinic is to establish a multi-disciplinary clinic to diagnose and treat functional GI Disorders (FGIDs) using a comprehensive, multi-modal approach to chronic abdominal pain and sensory predominant FGIDs (functional abdominal pain/visceral hyperalgesia, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic nausea, etc.). These are complex patients with various biopsychosocial and pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying their abdominal pain.
The clinic endeavors to serve as a unified home for their care. It strives to be the ideal venue to utilize diverse primary care, subspecialty and therapeutic offerings for managing chronic abdominal pain and related FGIDs.
How will this work benefit patients?
We have adopted a multi-disciplinary approach where the pediatric gastroenterologist, GI psychologist, psychiatrist and a pain medicine specialist work together to comprehensively take care of patients and improve their quality of life. This clinic model will allow us to capture valuable data and generate research questions and data to help us better understand pediatric FGIDs and improve care. Additionally, this will minimize the number of visits patients will have to make, as they will see multiple specialties in the same visit at the same time.
How is Children’s National leading in this space? How unique is this work?
There are only a few other institutions that provide a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach like this. These programs focus only on functional abdominal pain and not other functional GI disorders.
This model and approach to FGID is unique to Children’s National and not offered at many leading pediatric institutions. Thus, we are working towards innovating the care and creating a future standard for taking care of children with FGIDs.
