Press Date: 04/28/2010

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Digestive Disease Consultants at Doctors Hospital recently increased its capacity to deliver the most advanced diagnostic and treatment services with the addition of board-certified and fellowship-trained gastroenterologist Gaurav Mehta, MD.

Dr. Mehta joins board-certified gastroenterologist Seth Levin, DO, in the practice that provides comprehensive, state-of-the-art care for GI tumors, cysts, blockages, leaks and other gastrointestinal and bilary disorders.

"I'm thrilled to be part of the OhioHealth system and the Doctors Hospital team, with their outstanding reputations for excellence, innovation and patient care," said Dr. Mehta, who joined the practice January 31. "Even though it's a relatively small hospital, Doctors offers a level of service better than many university-based hospitals."

Dr. Mehta specializes in performing non-surgical treatments, including ERCP/EUS (Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography/Endoscopic Ultrasound), EMR (Endoscopic Mucosal Resection) and BARRX Therapy. These procedures enable physicians to remove gallstones, acquire tissue samples for biopsy, place stents to open blockages, drain fluids and to locate and destroy tumors, cysts and pre-cancerous growths.

"Over the last five years, with new instrumentation and techniques, medical science has progressed leaps and bounds in our ability to offer safer and more effective minimally invasive treatments of complex gastrointestinal tract disorders," Dr. Mehta said. "Most of them can be done on an outpatient basis. They speed recovery and ease the financial burden of patients and our health care system because they don't have to be hospitalized."

Dr. Mehta also applies minimally invasive nerve block techniques for the management of chronic pain associated with pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatis.

A graduate of K.J. Somaiya Medical College at the University of Mumbai in India, Dr. Mehta's training includes fellowships in therapeutic endoscopy at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston; in gastroenterology/hepatology at Hahnemann University Hospital at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia; and in hepatology/liver transplantation at Albert Einstein Medical Center, also in Philadelphia.

He completed his residency in internal medicine in 2006 at Graduate Hospital, Drexel University College of Medicine, where he was named most outstanding first-year and senior resident.

A native of India, Dr. Mehta grew up in a tight-knit family that included several siblings and cousins who became physicians, including his cousin Sanjay Mehta, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Grant Medical Center. "He has been a role model for me and one of the reasons I wanted to come to Columbus," Dr. Mehta said.

He chose to specialize in gastroenterology because it combines high-tech with high-touch medicine. "I love the new technology and the hands-on patient care it requires," he said.