HOW TO TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT EPI

Talking to Your Doctor About GI Issues

DR. GELRUD: You know, nobody likes to talk about stool, nobody likes to talk about bowel movements, but you need to understand that when you go and see a gastroenterologist, this is one of the conversations we’re going to be having. One of the things that I tell the patient is open up to us, let us know what’s going on. Don’t be ashamed. We’re gastroenterologists, we’re talking about stool all the time, we’re talking about bowel movements all the time, so open up so we can help you.

Frequently, what we see is that the symptoms began months or years ago, but they were afraid of telling the symptoms, telling us the complaints, you know, that we needed to hear. If they said that their stool, it’s looking funny and they don’t know how to describe it, believe it or not, we tell our patients to take a picture and send it or bring it because that’s going to be extremely helpful for us to help them.

We tell the patients to keep track of what they’re eating, what they’re not eating, so all the pieces of the puzzle that we can get to make the final diagnosis, we want to have it. The diagnosis can be, frequently, very difficult to make. The symptoms of EPI include frequent diarrhea, unexplained weight loss, oily stools. Oily stools is what we call in the medical terminology steatorrhea. Gas, bloating, abdominal pain. So it’s frequently the combination of these symptoms that makes us as doctors think that you may have this condition.