Intestinal Care Program

The Intestinal Care Program at Riley at IU Health uses the most advanced treatments to help your child’s intestine heal and to provide care when your child needs nutrition support. Intestinal failure can happen after a portion of the small intestine is removed during surgery (intestinal resection). This is called short bowel syndrome. Conditions that may require intestinal resection include:

• Atresia. This condition develops when sections of the small intestine are missing.
• Gastroschisis. This condition is diagnosed when the intestines remain outside the body.
• Necrotizing enterocolitis. This condition is diagnosed when intestinal tissue is inflamed.
• Stenosis. This condition is diagnosed when the small intestine has very narrow sections.
• Volvulus. This condition results from the small intestine becoming twisted.

Other conditions that can cause intestinal failure include:

• Feeding intolerance
• Radiation enteritis

The Intestinal Care Program at Riley at IU Health uses a multidisciplinary approach and is the only one of its kind in Indiana. Your child will receive care from a team of specialists in pediatric surgery, nutrition, pharmacy, wound care, social work and intestinal and liver transplants all at one location. The program provides total care for any child who needs IV or enteral (tube feeding) nutrition support.

You and your child can access services at our intestinal care clinic twice a month. The clinic provides opportunities for your child to take part in clinical trials for new medicines and nutrition formulations used to treat intestinal failure.

Advances in nutrition support allow our team to achieve great success in rehabilitating intestinal conditions. Children are often better able to feed using their intestine. These positive results mean that it is becoming fairly uncommon for children to need intestinal transplants or liver transplants.

When a transplant is required, the pediatric surgeons in the Intestinal Care Program collaborate with expert transplant services at IU Health to provide this specialized surgery.