Gastroparesis Treatments In Clearwater, FL

Most gastroparesis is managed first with diet changes and prokinetic medication, and a procedure is reserved for cases that don’t respond. That order matters. Standard guidance is to optimize medical therapy first and consider a pylorus-directed procedure such as endoscopic pyloromyotomy only for patients whose symptoms stay refractory.

Gastroparesis means the stomach empties too slowly without any physical blockage, which leaves food sitting for hours and drives the nausea, vomiting, bloating, early fullness, and unintended weight loss that make eating miserable. You can read a fuller overview of gastroparesis and its causes on our condition page. The short version: diabetes, prior surgery, viral illness, and certain medications are common triggers, and in many cases the cause is never found.

If you live in Clearwater, the practical path usually starts with a local gastroenterologist for diagnosis and first-line treatment. When diet and medication stop working, that’s the point to see a foregut specialist for a focused evaluation. Many Pinellas patients make the short drive to South Tampa for that step rather than settling for indefinite symptom management.

A good candidate for G-POEM has gastroparesis that hasn’t responded to optimized diet and medication, objectively confirmed delayed gastric emptying, and symptoms driven by the pylorus rather than another cause. If those boxes are checked, the procedure has a reasonable chance of helping.

Some people are not candidates, and saying so protects them. If you haven’t yet tried optimized medical therapy, that usually comes first. Opioid medications slow the gut and can both mimic and worsen gastroparesis, which changes the calculus. Mechanical blockage has to be ruled out. Idiopathic cases respond less reliably than diabetic or post-surgical ones, so expectations have to be set honestly. Dr. Grandhige is known for telling patients when a procedure is unlikely to help, and some people leave the consultation with a clear explanation and a non-surgical plan instead of an operation. For the right patient, that’s the right outcome.

A new investigational drug for gastroparesis reported positive results in 2026, which matters if medications haven’t worked for you so far. In the Phase 2b MOVE-IT trial of 328 adults with idiopathic or diabetic gastroparesis, presented at Digestive Disease Week in May 2026, the oral drug naronapride met its primary endpoint with statistically significant improvement in core symptoms, including nausea, early satiety, fullness, and upper abdominal pain, compared with placebo. It works through a dual mechanism, a 5-HT4 agonist and a D2 antagonist, with low systemic absorption, and it’s now advancing to Phase 3.

Naronapride isn’t approved or available yet. It matters here for two reasons: it may become a future option, and it’s a reason to have your case evaluated by someone tracking the field closely, whether that points toward a procedure now or trial eligibility later. Dr. Grandhige and the team follow these developments, and you can find plain-language explanations of reflux and foregut conditions on the practice blog.

This page was reviewed by Dr. Gopal Grandhige, MD, a board-certified general surgeon who is fellowship-trained in foregut and minimally invasive surgery at Yale New Haven Hospital. He earned his medical degree at the University of Michigan and completed his general surgery residency at Yale New Haven, and he has focused on foregut disease in the Tampa Bay area since 2009. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a member of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, and a founding member of the American Foregut Society. Across his foregut practice he has performed more than 600 fundoplications, more than 600 LINX procedures, and more than 200 TIF procedures, and his patients come largely through physician referrals. You can read more about Dr. Grandhige and his training, and verify his credentials through the American Board of Surgery, the American College of Surgeons directory, and the Florida Department of Health license lookup.