Gastroparesis Treatment in St. Petersburg, FL

G-POEM releases the pylorus, the muscular valve between your stomach and small intestine. When that valve stays too tight to relax, food can’t pass into the intestine at a normal rate. During the procedure, Dr. Grandhige passes a flexible endoscope through your mouth, creates a small tunnel under the pyloric muscle, and divides that muscle with an endoscopic knife so the valve opens more easily. Nothing is cut on the outside of your body.

The procedure takes about 20 to 30 minutes. Because it is endoscopic and incisionless, there are no abdominal wounds, recovery is faster than open or laparoscopic surgery, and most patients go home the same day. This is the same incisionless philosophy behind the other procedures performed at the practice, including TIF / EsophyX for reflux.

It is important to be honest about what G-POEM is and is not. Like other gastroparesis treatments, it is aimed at improving symptoms, not curing the underlying motility disorder. Published outcome data on G-POEM reports meaningful symptom improvement in a majority of carefully selected patients, with results that are strong early and less uniform over the long term, which is exactly why patient selection carries more weight than the procedure itself. For a clinical overview of gastroparesis and its treatments, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases is a reliable starting point.

Not everyone with delayed emptying should have G-POEM, and saying so up front is part of the evaluation. The right candidate has gastroparesis confirmed on a gastric emptying study, symptoms that line up with that delay, and a poor response to diet changes and promotility or anti-nausea medications. Dr. Grandhige reviews the emptying study, your symptom pattern, and your overall health before recommending anything.

The patients who often need a different path first are those with severe weight loss and malnutrition, who may be too high-risk for a definitive procedure until their nutrition is stabilized, and patients whose symptoms turn out to be driven by something other than gastroparesis. Early fullness, nausea, and bloating can come from reflux, functional stomach disorders, or a motility problem like achalasia, and those are treated very differently. The point of the workup is to separate the symptom from the cause before anyone picks up an endoscope.

If you are not a candidate, you should leave knowing why and what to do instead. That is the same standard Dr. Grandhige applies across his reflux practice: objective testing decides, and a procedure is recommended only when the evidence supports it.

Gastroparesis sits squarely inside foregut surgery, the esophagus, diaphragm, and stomach, which is the entire focus of this practice. Dr. Grandhige has practiced foregut surgery in Tampa Bay since 2009 and completed his fellowship in Foregut Surgery and Minimally Invasive Surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is board certified in general surgery, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a member of SAGES, and a founding member of the American Foregut Society. The single focus matters because distinguishing gastroparesis from reflux, functional disorders, and motility conditions is pattern recognition built from seeing these cases constantly rather than occasionally.

It also matters who is in the room. Dr. Grandhige performs every procedure at HCA Florida South Tampa Hospital with the same dedicated surgical team and his own physician assistant, who assists in every case and knows each patient’s anatomy and recovery course. After your procedure you have direct access to him and his team, not a rotating call line. That continuity is one of the most consistent things patients and referring physicians point to.

The path is built to be efficient without rushing the diagnosis. Before you ever come in, Dr. Grandhige personally reviews your records, prior diagnostic studies, and notes from other physicians, so the first visit starts from where you actually are. New patients are typically seen within two weeks and always within four weeks.

If your gastric emptying study and workup are already complete, one consultation is often enough to confirm the diagnosis, discuss whether G-POEM fits, and begin insurance authorization. If testing is still needed, the practice coordinates it through a small number of trusted facilities to keep quality high and delays short, with a follow-up visit to review results and finalize the plan. From first consultation to procedure typically runs four to eight weeks depending on testing and insurance authorization, which the office handles for you. Coming from St. Petersburg, that’s a roughly 20 minute drive to South Tampa for the visits and the procedure itself.

If you have questions about the process before booking, you can reach the team through the contact page.