Pediatric gastrointestinal symptoms and disorders

We examine and treat children’s gastrointestinal symptoms and diseases of the liver and bowels at our outpatient clinic and in inpatient care if necessary.

Common gastrointestinal symptoms in children include functional problems such as repeated or prolonged stomach pain, reflux symptoms, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and constipation. We refer children to specialist medical care if the attending physician considers it necessary to consult a specialist, for instance to evaluate the need for further examinations. Principally, functional bowel symptoms and diseases are treated in basic health care.

There has been a prominent increase in the incidence of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in children over the past decades. Chronic inflammatory bowel diseases such as chronic inflammatory colon disease and Crohn’s disease typically present in adolescence. The cause of these conditions remains unknown. IBD patients are centrally treated at the New Children’s Hospital and at Hyvinkää Hospital. The treatment continues until adulthood. We diagnose and treat celiac disease at the HUS Pediatric Outpatient Clinics.

There are many other, though rare, congenital and later-onset gastrointestinal diseases that present in childhood. We treat children with rare gastrointestinal diseases at the New Children’s Hospital until adulthood. Diagnostics and treatment of children’s liver diseases falls under the gastroenterology specialty. We manage the most severe cases of liver diseases jointly with the organ transplantation unit and with pediatric surgeons.

At all our Pediatric Emergency Departments, we provide urgent care to children with sudden severe stomach pain, severe diarrhea or vomiting, or other severe gastrointestinal symptoms. The Pediatric Emergency Departments are also for evaluating child patients arriving for urgent care on a physician’s referral and for addressing suddenly worsening gastrointestinal symptoms in children being monitored at the Pediatric Outpatient Clinics.