Gastrointestinal Surgery

What is gastrointestinal surgery?

Gastrointestinal surgery addresses problems in your gastrointestinal (digestive) tract. Your gastrointestinal tract starts at the back of your mouth and includes:

• Food pipe (esophagus)
• Small intestine
• Large intestine (colon, rectum, and anus)
• Gallbladder
• Liver
• Pancreas

When you eat or drink, the food and drink move all the way through the digestive tract before exiting your body as feces when you have a bowel movement.

But a problem within your digestive tract can disrupt this process and cause severe symptoms like abdominal pain, bleeding, and other concerns. Gastrointestinal surgery corrects the problems in your digestive tract to ease your symptoms and allow you to eat and drink without fear.

What conditions does gastrointestinal surgery treat?

Gastrointestinal surgery treats a wide range of problems, including:

• Barrett’s esophagus
• Gallstones
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)
• Hiatal hernias
• Gastric ulcers
• Digestive tract cancer
• Diverticulitis
• Liver disease
• Inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis)
• Rectal prolapse
• Hemorrhoids
• Appendicitis

Gastrointestinal surgery is an advanced approach to digestive disorders. Most people choose surgery only after trying conservative, nonsurgical treatments like medication and minimally invasive procedures.

What is the gastrointestinal surgery process like?

Because gastrointestinal surgery can occur anywhere from your mouth to your anus, the specific procedure and experience can vary widely from one patient to another. Before your scheduled surgery, your surgeon explains the approach necessary for your situation and lets you know what to expect.

At Arizona Preferred Surgeons, the skilled board-certified doctors use a minimally invasive approach to gastrointestinal surgery whenever possible. With laparoscopic and robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery, your surgeon accesses your digestive tract through several buttonhole-sized incisions.

A miniature video camera sends live video of the surgical area to a monitor. Your surgeon watches the monitor as they use specialized surgical tools to perform your procedure through the small incisions. This type of surgery results in less bleeding and pain, and you can expect to recover much faster.

The Arizona Preferred Surgeons doctors have extensive experience in open surgery as well, in which they use one longer incision instead. Additionally, some in-office procedures don’t require incisions, for example, hemorrhoid banding, as an alternative to surgery.

To learn more about gastrointestinal surgery from the experts at Arizona Preferred Surgeons, call the office now or click on the provided link.