Fellowship Program in Gastroenterology
The Gastroenterology Division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is one of the largest academic units in the United States on the basis of clinical activity, size and expertise of faculty and research activities. The division has 23 MDs, 7 research faculty, 18 clinical and research fellows, and 20 research associates and technicians.
The goals of the division are: to provide compassionate, timely and cost-effective patient care; to carry out cutting-edge clinical and basic research on gastrointestinal diseases and processes; to teach the science and art of our specialty to students, post-graduate trainees, and to our colleagues; to provide a nurturing environment for the career development of our faculty. The GI Division's clinical and academic activities are under the leadership of J. Thomas LaMont, MD, Chief of the Division and Myron Falchuk, MD, Director of Clinical Services. The division admits more than 1, 000 patients per year to BIDMC, has 16,000 outpatient visits and 20,000 procedures, placing it among the largest academic GI groups in New England. By streamlining our referral process, our patients now have much shorter waiting times for new appointments and diagnostic procedures. To facilitate the growth of our clinical and research programs, the division has established six specialized centers: The Pancreas Center, The Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, The Liver Center, The Center for Interventional Endoscopy, The Motility Center and The Celiac Center . These centers provide a multidisciplinary focus for academic and clinical activities on a common theme, with representation from the departments of Surgery, Pathology, and Radiology, as well as the Division of Infectious Diseases, Endocrinology and Oncology.
The research activities of the GI Division are housed in the East Campus on Dana 5 and 6. Currently, the GI Division has thirteen NIH grants for research training. A broad range of clinical and basic research projects are underway and additional growth is planned for the next three to four years. Clinical research projects in the division include pancreatic disease and cystic fibrosis, motility disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, vaccine development for enteric infections and therapy of viral hepatitis. Basic research projects are focused on novel cancer therapies, signal transduction, regulation of pancreatic secretion, mechanism of enterotoxins, neuropeptide receptors, basic mechanisms of intestinal inflammation, and relationships of stress to intestinal pathophysiology.
