Center for Esophageal & Gastric Surgery
Top: Doctor consults another heal-care professional, Middle: Sugery team in action, Bottom: Two doctors review an image.  The simple acts of eating and drinking shouldn’t cause discomfort. If you’ve developed a disorder, disease or injury of esophagus and stomach, our clinical specialists are here for you.

At any stage of life, conditions can emerge that make eating and swallowing painful or uncomfortable. At the UW Medicine Center for Esophageal & Gastric Surgery, we diagnose and treat patients for acid reflux (GERD), achalasia, Barrett’s Esophagus and other food-transit problems, hernias, diverticula and cancer.

More than 1,000 patients a year, from Seattle and beyond, visit our clinic and diagnostic lab to resolve disorders of the upper gastrointestinal tract. These conditions often materialize slowly and have subtle origins.

With many decades of experience, our physicians expertly interpret symptoms using endoscopy, manometry, pH monitoring, intraluminal impedance and other diagnostics. We can help coordinate radiology and nuclear-medicine tests with other departments at UW Medical Center. After testing and evaluation, we clearly communicate results and our recommendations to the patient and referring physician, if the patient was referred.

We fully inform patients about non-surgical and surgical treatment options, and involve patients in establishing a course of care that is realistic and desirable for them and affords the best opportunity to return to normalcy.

Our center is one of only a few such sites in the United States that specialize in diagnosing and surgically treating esophageal and gastric diseases. When medications and first-line treatments fail to relieve troubling symptoms, our surgeons use minimally invasive techniques in every possible instance. This approach minimizes the discomfort associated with surgery and helps our patients recover more quickly.
Featured Article
Esophageal Motility Disorders
Providers Brant Kurt Oelschlager, M.D.

When food doesn't move down the esophagus

Normally, a person’s esophagus performs a wave of sequenced contractions, called peristalsis, to move food from the throat to the stomach. When peristalsis is impaired, the most common diagnosis is achalasia. It is a rare disorder in which the lower esophageal sphincter (LES), a ringed muscle that acts as a valve between the esophagus and... Read more
Featured Provider
Carlos A Pellegrini, M.D.
Carlos A Pellegrini, M.D. Dr. Pellegrini is a UW professor of surgery and the chair of the Department of Surgery. He is a world-renowned surgeon in the area of esophageal ...
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