Treatments for Gastroparesis
As one of few centers participating in a national study to develop novel treatments for gastroparesis, we develop personalized treatments for each individual. At Stanford Health Care, we have helped people who have had symptoms for years feel better through innovative combinations of medications and specialized nutrition therapy.
Your treatment may include:
- Gastric electrical stimulation: Using electrodes attached to your stomach wall, a special device sends electrical pulses to help trigger stomach contractions that help move food along your digestive tract. Learn more about gastric electrical stimulation.
- Medical nutrition therapy: Working with nutrition experts from Nutrition Services who specialize in gastrointestinal disorders, we help you find foods that are easy for your stomach to digest. This may include avoiding certain things, such as fatty foods and raw vegetables.
- Medication: Taking medications to stimulate contractions in your stomach muscles can help you feel better.
- Pain management: Offering innovative approaches, experts at Stanford Health Care's GI Pain Clinic address the source of your pain. Your treatment may include medications, stress management, or alternative therapies, such as acupuncture.
- Total parenteral nutrition: Getting all the nutrition you need from special fluids you receive through a catheter (thin, spaghetti-like tube) in your vein. Total parenteral nutrition can help you, if your intestines need time to heal or if your stomach has lost its ability to absorb nutrients from food taken by mouth.
- Tube feeding: Helping you get adequate nutrition when your body is not getting enough nutrients from food by mouth, tube feeding works by delivering specially formulated liquid nutrition directly to your stomach through a special tube known as a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube.