Advances in the Diagnosis and Management of Digestive System Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

Although substantial advancements in the diagnosis and management of digestive system diseases have been achieved in recent years, we are still facing various challenges and dilemmas in dealing with these conditions in daily clinical practice.

To help understand and cope with these disorders, this Special Issue will focus on updates of pathogenesis, diagnosis criteria/consensus, and therapy guidelines, emphasizing efforts in tackling diagnosis and treatment difficulties.

SARS-CoV-2-induced injury in the digestive system is a significant component of COVID-19-caused mortality and mobility. Emerging microorganisms, especially drug-resistant ones, are increasingly identified in the digestive system and need special attention. Inflammatory diseases such as celiac disease, eosinophilic esophagitis/eosinophilic gastroenteritis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and inflammatory bowel syndrome are still a heavy burden in healthcare, with a need for new diagnostic workups/biomarkers, therapeutic modalities, and methods evaluating therapy response. Accurate and timely diagnosis and treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) are still regarded as a challenging area, especially the effectiveness of preventing its progression into Barett's esophagus with currently available treatments. Inflammatory diseases of the liver, including hepatitis B virus infection and primary biliary and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), have insufficient therapy responses in a significant subset of patients. The annual incidences of esophageal adenocarcinoma and colon cancer have continuously increased in the past decade(s), especially in young adults, which necessitates early diagnosis and more effective surveillance strategies and calls for more precisive management of precursor lesions in Barrett's esophagus, IBD and PSC. Molecular monitoring of minimal residual disease (MRD) in managing diagnosed GI malignancies offers predictive and prognostic value. The optimization of treatment of early GI cancers such as pT1 colon cancer is still an unmet need. Liver transplantation is the treatment of choice for liver cancer and liver failure. While acute cellular rejection is amenable to immune suppressors, chronic rejection and antibody-mediated rejection in graft survival are not well understood and remain major challenges in liver transplantation.

We invite authors to contribute knowledge in pathogenesis, diagnosis, and advanced therapies for digestive system diseases.

Dr. Jialing Huang
Guest Editor

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• digestive system
• pathology
• liver transplantation
• diagnosis
• therapy