The Gastroenterology Department of Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of digestive diseases in the elderly and critical digestive illnesses. The Gastroenterology Department is a leader in this field in China. It is the training base of specialist physicians and sub-speciality physicians designated by China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission and the clinical pharmacology base of the Ministry of Health. It is entitled to confer master’s and Ph.D. in gastroenterology. The Gastroenterology Department is staffed by 18 doctors, 20% of whom hold a title of associate professor or higher. Moreover, 70% of the 45 nurses and technicians at the department are holders of medium-level professional title or higher. The Gastroenterology Department consists of the ward, ICU, outpatient service, endoscope center, and gastrointestinal function checkup office. It receives over 150,000 outpatients annually and cures about 2,000 inpatients a year. The ward is equipped with 50 beds and the ICU 8. About 61% of the patients treated by the department are critically ill.

Beijing Municipal Geriatric Medical Research Center and Beijing Geriatric Healthcare Center housed in Xuanwu Hospital are leading medical organizations in geriatric health service system in Beijing City. They are charged with management. Guided by the two centers, the Gastroenterology Department highlights the features of geriatrics by completing over 30 major research projects about geriatric gastroenterology, making the department more prosperous and influential.

As early as the 1990s, Professor ZHANG Mei pioneered the research on senile digestive diseases in China as the country’s society was aging. Her studies fill a void in the field of senile digestive disease epidemiology in Beijing and even the whole China, providing an important basis for the prevention and control of senile digestive disorders in Beijing and China as a whole.

Over the past nine years, the Gastroenterology Department of Xuanwu Hospital has trained a great number of doctors who are committed to the diagnosis and treatment of digestive diseases for senior citizens in China. Director ZHANG Mei of the Gastroenterology Department encourages more doctors to serve grass-roots hospitals in Tibet and Inner Mongolia. She set up a regular referral treatment system and helped grass-roots hospitals grow by pairing them with Xuanwu Hospital.

The Gastroenterology Department chiefly treats elder patients. As a national center for critically ill patients, it provides all-around, personalized quality service for every patient. By virtue of years’ clinical and research experience and outstanding doctors, the department treats a great number of patients with serious digestive illnesses such as massive hemorrhage of gastrointestinal tract, severe acute pancreatitis, liver cirrhosis, hepatic encephalopathy, septicopyemia, shock, acute myocardial infarction, acute cerebral infarction, multiple organ failure, etc. The department’s precision medical concept helped to reduce the death rate and enables thousands of patients to regain their health.