Motility Specialist Gastroparesis In St. Petersburg, FL

St. Petersburg has solid general GI care. What Pinellas County has less of is a surgeon who treats the foregut exclusively and can take you past diet and medication into procedural treatment when testing supports it.

Two procedural paths exist for refractory gastroparesis, and they are not interchangeable. One is gastric electrical stimulation (a gastric pacer, the Enterra device), offered locally in Pinellas County. The other is G-POEM, which cuts the pyloric muscle to improve emptying. The pacer is a neuromodulation approach. G-POEM is a mechanical one aimed directly at the pylorus. Which fits you depends on your gastric emptying study, your symptom pattern, and your history, not on which device a given office happens to offer.

Dr. Grandhige’s position is that you confirm an objective emptying delay before you intervene, rather than running another medication trial or moving to a procedure on symptoms alone. That testing-first standard is the reason patients make the short drive from St. Pete, Gulfport, and the beaches instead of escalating care closer to home. You can read more about how gastroparesis is diagnosed and treated on our condition page.

For patients whose symptoms persist despite diet changes and medication, Dr. Grandhige performs G-POEM, also called the POP procedure (per-oral pyloromyotomy). It targets the pylorus, the muscular valve between the stomach and the small intestine. When that valve stays too tight, food cannot drain. Loosening it improves emptying.

The procedure is endoscopic and incisionless. Using a flexible endoscope passed through the mouth, a small tunnel is created under the pyloric muscle, and the muscle is then divided with an endoscopic knife. There are no abdominal incisions. Dr. Grandhige is one of only a handful of physicians who performs this procedure in Tampa Bay.

Published research on endoscopic pyloromyotomy reports clinical success in roughly 50 to 80 percent of carefully selected patients, according to the National Institutes of Health. Patient selection is the variable that moves you toward the top of that range or excludes you from the procedure entirely, which is why the gastric emptying study comes first and surgery is never recommended on symptoms alone.

G-POEM is not the only surgical option. For different presentations, Dr. Grandhige also performs robotic or laparoscopic pyloroplasty, which divides the pyloric muscle through small abdominal incisions. For patients with severe weight loss and malnutrition who are too high-risk for a definitive procedure, feeding tubes can stabilize nutrition first. In rare, severe cases unresponsive to everything else, subtotal gastrectomy is considered as a last resort. The point is that the procedure is matched to the patient, not the other way around.

Most people who reach this office have already spent years cycling through medications and physicians. If several of these describe you, a gastric emptying study is the logical next step:

• You vomit undigested food hours after eating.
• You feel full after a few bites, and that early fullness has caused weight loss you did not intend.
• Chronic nausea is not controlled by the medications you have tried.
• You have a gastroparesis diagnosis already, but your current treatment is not working.
• You have diabetes and suspect your blood sugar swings are tied to slow stomach emptying.
• You had surgery that may have affected the vagus nerve, and digestive problems followed.
• You have seen multiple gastroenterologists without a clear plan, or you have been told tests look normal while your symptoms continue.
• Diet and medication have failed, and you want to know whether a procedure is an option.

These experiences are real, and they point to a workup that general practice often skips.

Dr. Gopal Grandhige is a board-certified general surgeon and the founder and medical director of Tampa Bay Reflux Institute. He has focused on foregut surgery, the esophagus, diaphragm, and stomach, since 2009, and has practiced in the Tampa Bay area for over 16 years.

His training: a bachelor of science in biology from Johns Hopkins University, a medical degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, general surgery residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and fellowship training at Yale-New Haven Hospital in both burn and critical care and in foregut and minimally invasive surgery. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS), a member of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), and a founding member of the American Foregut Society.

He performs all procedures at HCA South Tampa Hospital, with a dedicated operating room team and his own physician assistant assisting on every case and available for questions afterward. Patients can independently confirm his standing through the American Board of Surgery, the American College of Surgeons directory, and the Florida Department of Health license lookup. You can learn more about Dr. Grandhige and the practice on our about page.

Beyond gastroparesis, the practice treats the full range of foregut conditions, including GERD, achalasia (treated with Heller myotomy and tailored using the Endoflip system), hiatal hernias, and silent reflux (LPR). Many patients arrive with more than one of these at once, which is the case for matching care to physiology rather than to a single diagnosis.