Conditions We Treat

Our multidisciplinary team uses innovative and groundbreaking techniques and therapies, along with pioneering research, to treat both simple and highly complex conditions and rare diseases that affect the length and integrity of your child’s intestines. Our treatments enhance your child’s ability to move food, digest food, and absorb nutrients to develop and grow. The global goal of intestinal rehabilitation is to heal a compromised or short bowel to the point where a child can return to normal eating habits. 

Our comprehensive team of gastroenterologists, pediatric surgeons, registered dietitians, social workers, clinical nurse specialists, research experts, and pharmacists all have specific training and experience with intestinal rehabilitation and nutrition support. We provide the full continuum of care for all types of conditions that affect the intestines and create challenges for nutritional health. We meet families where they are and improve care from there, as every child’s intestinal needs are unique.

Conditions include the following:

• Short bowel syndrome. Also called short-gut, this condition occurs when part of the small intestine is missing, making it difficult to absorb nutrients from food.
• Gastroschisis. A birth defect that causes a baby’s intestines to grow outside the body. Surgery is conducted shortly after birth to put intestines back inside, but sometimes the intestines fail, which leaves a child with a shorter or dysmotile bowel requiring nutrition support.
• Necrotizing enterocolitis. A serious illness in premature infants where tissue in the large intestine (small bowel or colon) gets inflamed, is damaged, or dies.
• Pediatric intestinal pseudo-obstruction (PIPO). A rare motility disorder involving the nerves and muscles or special cells in the intestines that keep liquids and foods from moving through the intestines, causing symptoms of a blockage.
• Motility disorders. A grouping of disorders, including PIPO, Hirschsprung disease, achalasia, and immune mediated dysmotility, where the intestines do not contract normally to move food along the intestinal tract from the mouth to the anus.
• Enteropathy. A general term for diseases of the small intestine.
• Pediatric onset congenital enteropathy (PediCODE) or congenital diarrheal disorders (CDDs). Inherited diarrhea disorders, sometimes with monogenic (a single gene) inheritance, that start in the first weeks of life and are associated with malabsorption and feeding difficulties.
• Immune enteropathies. Uncommon diseases caused by an immune system disorder, including primary immunodeficiency, FOXP3, and IPEX syndrome, which result in diarrhea in early childhood.
• Intestinal failure. When the intestines no longer work well enough to sustain growth and nutrition, requiring either ongoing TPN support or intestinal transplant.
• Intestinal failure associated liver disease. A state where the liver no longer works well enough to sustain life, requiring intestinal or liver transplantation.
• Very early onset IBD (VEO-IBD). A form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in children under 6 years of age, which demands targeted treatments. IBD is an umbrella term for conditions that include Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. IBD is characterized by inflammation of the intestines. To treat, we partner with our renowned IBD Center.