Brooks Cash, MD: Areas of Unmet Need in Gastroenterology

In an interview with MD Magazine® at ACG 2019, Brooks Cash, MD, AGAF, FACG, FACP, FASGE, chief of gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, delivers his take on areas of unmet need within the gastroenterology field.

Cash: I'd say the most pressing areas of unmet need are increasingly effective and well-tolerated medications for inflammatory bowel disease. Certainly, there's a lot that we need to learn with regards to the evaluation and the management of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). That's really going to come to the fore, actually [it] really already has, in terms of being a leading cause of cirrhosis and liver-associated death in the next 20 to 30 years, unfortunately. We don't have any really effective therapies right now for that condition. Then, of course, in my own areas—increasing compliance and adherence with colorectal cancer screening and effective therapies for a wide variety of functional gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome and chronic diarrhea and chronic constipation and functional dyspepsia.