Which doctor can help me with my colon? One deals with butts and one deals with Guts.
The Tools of the Colorectal trade is a copyrighted work. There is a difference between a colorectal surgeon and a gastroenterologist.
Training. Most of my patients think we are one and the same, so this is one of the most common questions I don’t ask. There is one major difference between what we do and what we don’t do. Colorectal surgeons and gastroenterologists do not do surgery. People don’t know to ask so I haven’t seen much online about this.
We have to choose our specialties, so the two branches are medicine and surgery. You have to decide if you want to operate on people or not in a lot of other specialties. We have to make a decision when we graduate from medical school. Medicine and surgery are separated by the algorithm. Isn’t it all medicine? You graduated from medical school, not surgery school.
There is a split between medicine and surgery. If you go to the specialty decision tree on the internet, you will see that people have made up a lot of things over the years for how to decide what to do with your life. Some of them are funnier than others.
Gastroenterology is a medical discipline. 3 years of training on top of 3 years of residency training is what GI is. They do not do surgery since they are a branch of medicine. Inflammation of the GI tract.
This is sometimes referred to as Endoscopy, even though it is actually a term for anything involving a scope. They have the knowledge to treat a lot of diseases with medication. Medical management is usually left to the GI doctors. Part of the confusion is that gastroenterologists perform a lot of procedures, which can be done in the office or in an outpatient setting These involve esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), which is an upper GI endoscopy for the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum.
General surgery includes colorectal surgery. It takes another year on top of the five years of surgical training. We are trained to diagnose diseases that may eventually need surgery. The colorectal surgery is done.
Bleeding, obstruction of the colon, or a lack of blood supply in the colon are all surgical emergencies. Sometimes GI diagnoses these issues, and then a surgeon is consulted. From the beginning, surgeons are involved. When you see the inside of the abdomen during surgery, you have a better idea of what happens outside and what happens inside.
The GI and Colorectal surgeons have different areas of disease that they treat. The list includes both benign and malignant colon, anal and rectal diseases, and some small intestine as well. Some of the problems include colon or rectal cancer, diverticulitis, inflammatory bowel diseases, hemorrhoids, chronic constipation, fecal incontinence, and sometimes small bowel tumors. Similarities.
I am happy to facilitate a natural divide because GI is better at screening colonoscopies. I try not to step on the toes of the GI doctors who refer cancer patients to me, but I will do screening colonoscopies for patients who specifically ask me to because I am their surgeon. In their training, GI physicians perform more colonoscopes than we do in our surgery training, which is why both GI and Colorectal surgeons do colonoscopies. GI does 1000 scopes, while we only do 1000 surgeries.
Bandaging hemorrhoids, which colorectal surgeons do as well, are also done by GI physicians. We start to look into our differences. Diagnostic colonoscopies will be done on patients who are already known to have a tumor in order to determine the location and mark it before surgery. I have first-hand knowledge of patients who have had colonoscopies that have deviated from normal, and I perform them as well.
Hepatologists treat diseases of the bile duct and the liver, which are part of the upper GI. The upper GI can be done via endoscopy, such as clearing out gallstones. There are differences.
Carmen Fong is a person. Colorectal surgery deals with the hindgut, which is the last part of the digestive tract, and includes small bowel, colon, rectum, and anus. Some of us are board-certified general surgeons and can perform operations on the upper GI tract.
Hemorrhoid banding is the only anorectal procedures done by gdpeologists. We learn in training that there are eight other ways to treat hemorrhoids, some of which are better than others. Colorectal surgeons spend a lot of time learning about the anal and the Pelvic. We are different from any other specialty. This allows us to be able to perform small surgeries on the rectum, such as fecal incontinence and rectal prolapse, which may be necessary for anal cancer.
gastroenterologists will treat conditions medically, but only colorectal surgeons can treat them. If you’re not sure about the scope of the doctor’s practice, just ask! We’re always happy to explain.
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