Preliminary Program

Iain Murray, MD CM, FRCP(C)
President, Ontario Association of Gastroenterology
Section Chair, OMA, Section on Gastroenterology
Medical Director, Intestinal Health Institute

 

Dr. Iain Murray's family immigrated from far oversees in 1972. He attended school and CEGEP on the island of Montreal. His Bachelor of Science was obtained at the University of Toronto and a Master's degree at the Anatomy Department of McGill University. He graduated from McGill Medical School in 1990. Dr. Murray did his post-graduate training in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at the University of Western Ontario. He first set up practice at Markham-Stouffville hospital in 1995. In 2003 he became a co-founder of the Intestinal Health Institute where is continues his gastroenterology practice. Dr. Murray is the current President of the Ontario Association of Gastroenterology (OAG) and Chair of the OMA Section on Gastroenterology. Dr. Murray is married with three children.

Hemant Shah, MD, MScCH, HPTE, FRCP(C)
Education Director, Francis Family Liver Clinic, Toronto Western Hospital
Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
Secretary, Ontario Association of Gastroenterology

 

Dr. Hemant Shah is an Assistant Professor, Staff Hepatologist and Clinic Director at the Francis Family Liver Clinic, Toronto Western Hospital, University of Toronto. His clinical focus is viral liver disease and he maintains a busy teaching practice. In addition to clinical care, Dr. Shah is actively engaged in projects to develop innovative models of care for viral hepatitis, progress interprofessional collaboration and improve knowledge levels amongst primary care and specialty providers. He also serves as Program Director of the Hepatology Fellowship which trains three to five clinical and research fellows annually. Dr. Shah has graduate training in Health Practitioner Education. 

Iain Murray, MD CM, FRCP(C)
President, Ontario Association of Gastroenterology
Section Chair, OMA, Section on Gastroenterology
Medical Director, Intestinal Health Institute

Dr. Iain Murray's family immigrated from far oversees in 1972. He attended school and CEGEP on the island of Montreal. His Bachelor of Science was obtained at the University of Toronto and a Master's degree at the Anatomy Department of McGill University. He graduated from McGill Medical School in 1990. Dr. Murray did his post-graduate training in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at the University of Western Ontario. He first set up practice at Markham-Stouffville hospital in 1995. In 2003 he became a co-founder of the Intestinal Health Institute where is continues his gastroenterology practice. Dr. Murray is the current President of the Ontario Association of Gastroenterology (OAG) and Chair of the OMA Section on Gastroenterology. Dr. Murray is married with three children.

Mohammad Yaghoobi, MD, MSc (Epi), AFS, FRCPC
Assistant Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine
Attending Gastroenterologist: Hamilton Health Sciences and St. Joseph's Hospital

 

Dr. Mohammad Yaghoobi is a gastroenterologist and an advanced endoscopist. He is an assistant professor of medicine and attending gastroenterologist at McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences. He received his medical degree from Tehran University School of Medicine followed by an AFS degree from University of Paris in France. He then completed simultaneous Master’s Degree in Health Research Methodology as well as a research and clinical fellowship at McMaster University. Afterward, he finished his residency in internal medicine at University of Toronto and his clinical fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at McGill University. He was then appointed as the Clinical Instructor in Advanced Endoscopy Program and staff gastroenterologist at the Medical University of South Carolina before accepting his current position at McMaster University.

Dr. Yaghoobi is certified in both Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology and Hepatology from both the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is fully licensed to practice medicine and gastroenterology and hepatology by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Michael Gould, MD, FRCP(C)
William Osler Health Centre
Medical Director & President, Vaughn Endoscopy Clinic
Vice President, Toronto Digestive Disease Associates Research Group
Director, Canadian Digestive Health Foundation

 

Dr. Michael Gould is currently the Medical Director and President of the Vaughan Endoscopy Clinic, Vice President of The Toronto Digestive Disease Associates Research Group, and a Board member of the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation. He graduated from Medicine at University of Toronto in 1985 and completed his GI fellowship in 1991. He has a busy clinical practice, including over 1400 colonoscopies per year. Dr. Gould is a current member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) committee setting the standards for out-patient facilities. He has participated in quality and standards initiatives with the CPSO, Cancer Care Ontario, Canadian Association of Gastroenterology and Ontario Association of Gastroenterology, since 1999. He speaks frequently on the topic of Quality Endoscopy. He is a former Chief of Medicine at the William Osler Health Centre, a Past President of the Ontario Association of Gastroenterology (OAG), and a Past Co-Chair of the Specialist Coalition of Ontario (SCO).

Paul Marotta, MD, FRCP(C)
Associate Professor
University of Western Ontario
Transplant Hepatology and Gastroenterology
Medical Director Liver Transplantation, Multiorgan Transplant Unit
London Health Sciences Centre

 

Dr. Paul Marotta is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Marotta is the Medical Director of Liver Transplantation at the London Health Sciences Centre and is the Program Director of the Advanced Hepatology/Liver Transplantation Fellowship Program. Dr. Marotta is currently president of the Canadian Liver Transplant Network and on the Governing Board of the Canadian Association for the Study of Liver Disease. Dr. Marotta has over 60 peer reviewed publications and is published in many varied fields of medicine including health economic journals, pathology journals, pediatric journals, radiology journals in addition to the numerous publications in gastrointestinal, hepatology and transplant related journals.

Dr. Marotta is involved in many clinical research protocols involving hepatitis C virus, hepatitis B, HCC, cost effective analysis, autoimmune liver diseases and immunosuppression in liver transplant population.

Naoki Chiba, MD, MSc, FRCP(C), AGAF, CAGF
Clinical Professor
McMaster University

 

Dr. Chiba is a Guelph-based community gastroenterologist with interest in ERCP and office endoscopy. He also has an academic appointment as Clinical Professor at McMaster. He received his MD (Cum Laude) in1986 from UWO. He completed gastroenterology and research training fellowships at McMaster University in 1992 and in 2004, he completed his Masters in Health Research Methodology at McMaster. Despite being in community practice, he has authored 95 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. He has participated in over 70 multicentre clinical trials. Primary research interests focus on acid related disorders and evidence based medicine. Interests include singing in the Guelph Chamber Choir, golf and his beloved bearded collies, Murphy and Molly.

Presentation Overview:
To highlight four of the best acid-related disorder papers at DDW 2016.

Nancy Baxter, MD, PhD, FRCSC
Head, Division of General Surgery
St. Michael’s Hospital
Professor of Surgery
University of Toronto

 

Dr. Nancy Baxter obtained her MD and PhD in Clinical Epidemiology from University of Toronto (UofT).  She is board certified in colon and rectal surgery and a Fellow of the ASCRS. Currently, she is the Head of the Division of General Surgery at St. Michael’s Hospital. She holds a Scientist position with the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute and is a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).

Dr. Baxter is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a Professor in the Department of Surgery and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the UofT.  She holds the position of Provincial GI Endoscopy lead for Cancer Care Ontario.

She is a clinical epidemiologist and health services researcher interested in the effectiveness of cancer screening, long-term cancer survivorship of cancer, and the quality of surgical care.  She has extensive experience in the use of administrative data and cancer registry data to evaluate long-term consequences of cancer care for adults.

Avantika (Nicky) Marwaha, BScOT, MD, FRCP(C)
Medical Director and Gastroenterologist
GI Health Centre

 

Dr. Avantika Marwaha grew up in Montreal during her formative years and learned to speak French at a very early age. She continued her high school and University studies in French. She is therefore fluently bilingual in both of Canada’s national languages. She is also fluent in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu.

Dr. Marwaha completed a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Occupational Therapy at the University of Ottawa in 2000. She then enrolled in medical school at the University of Ottawa and graduated in 2004.

Dr. Marwaha completed her internal medicine and gastroenterology training at McMaster University. She graduated from the Gastroenterology program in 2010. During her training, she worked on research related to the prevalence and risk factors for dyspepsia with Dr. Paul Moayyedi.

Dr. Marwaha is passionate about working in underserviced areas and with underprivileged communities. She has provided internal medicine and gastroenterology care to many underserviced areas within Canada, including Thunder Bay, Ontario; Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. She also did an educational elective at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a government hospital in New Delhi, India, during her gastroenterology training. These experiences have instilled in her the importance of providing holistic and culturally-sensitive care to patients.

Reena Khanna,  MD, FRCPC, MSc 
Assistant Professor - Department of Medicine
University of Western Ontario

 

Reena Khanna completed a MSc in Clinical Epidemiology at McMaster University and an Honors BSc with high distinction at the University of Toronto.  She studied Medicine and Internal Medicine at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) before entering Fellowship training in Gastroenterology at McMaster University.  Subsequently, Dr. Khanna completed a clinical and research fellowship in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) at the Cleveland Clinic and a research fellowship in International Clinical Trials Fellowship in Amsterdam NL, San Diego USA, London Canada.   Dr. Khanna is currently an Assistant Professor and Junior Scientist at UWO.  Dr. Khanna’s primary research interest is the development of outcome measures for evaluation of new treatments for IBD and designing and conducting clinical trials. 

Neeraj Narula, MD, FRCP(C)
Assistant Professor, McMaster University
Staff Gastroenterologist, Hamilton Health Sciences
Clinical Associate, Mount Sinai Hospital

 

Dr. Neeraj Narula is an assistant professor of medicine at McMaster University, staff gastroenterologist in Hamilton Health Sciences, and clinical associate at Mount Sinai Hospital.  He completed the Present-Levison advanced IBD fellowship in Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York, NY, in 2015.  He trained to be a Chartered Accountant at the University of Waterloo and has worked at Ernst & Young and KPMG.  He subsequently attended medical school at the University of Alberta.  He completed internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship training at McMaster University.  He is completing a Masters of Public Health at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.  His research interests are predominantly in clinical epidemiology, nutrition, and pharmaceutical trials in IBD.  

Presentation Overview:
This presentation will review interesting abstracts in the field of Crohn’s disease that were presented at DDW and ECCO 2017.

David Armstrong, MA, MB BChir, FRCP (UK), FRCP(C), FACG, AGAF
Professor, Department of Medicine, McMaster University;
Consultant Gastroenterologist, Division of Gastroenterology, Hamilton Health Sciences,
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

 

David Armstrong is Professor of Medicine at McMaster University.

He graduated from Cambridge University and King’s College Hospital, London, UK.  After 2 years as a family physician in Labrador, he completed his medicine and gastroenterology training in the UK, Switzerland and Canada in 1995.

His clinical interests include upper GI disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, nutrition, cystic fibrosis, endoscopy, electronic health records, education and quality. He is an active researcher with over 250 full publications.

He is Medical Director of the Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) Home Parenteral Nutrition Program and he co-chairs the HHS Nutrition Committee & HHS Endoscopy Committee.

He is President of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology, a CAG SEE Faculty Member, Regional Governor (Ontario) & Councillor (Canada) for the American College of Gastroenterology, Chair of the Canadian National Colon Cancer Screening Network and a Board Member of the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation.

He lives with his wife and a diminishing proportion of his 5 sons in Hamilton, Ontario.

Presentation Overview:
The human microbiome - about 100 trillion bacterial cells - may be considered an organ in its own right and, as DNA-based techniques (& to a lesser extent, RNA-, protein- and metabolic-based techniques) have developed for the identification of microbes, microbiome research has increased dramatically although research into viruses, fungi, eukaryotes and bacteriophages is in its infancy. Numerous associations have been reported between particular microbiome constituents or compositions and a variety of disorders ranging from IBS to IBD, obesity to malignancy and anxiety to autism spectrum disorder; other studies have evaluated the effects of manipulating the microbiome, in health and disease, using diet, probiotics, antibiotics and fecal microbiome transplantation (FMT). Research presented at DDW has reported on the effects of diet, including a defined semi-vegetarian diet, on microbiome and gut inflammation in healthy individuals (Abstr. 1a, 1b). A randomised, placebo-controlled study reported a beneficial effect of FMT on symptom scores and quality of life in IBS patients (Abstr. 430), although the mechanism or mechanisms of action remain unclear (Abstr. 140, 143, 734). Similarly, the beneficial effect of FMT for C. difficile may be related to bacteriophage transfer (Abstr. 639a) or changes in bile acid metabolism (Abstr. 168) rather than ‘restoration’ of microbial diversity. In other diseases, the role of the microbiome has been explored in the pathogenesis of colorectal polyps and their progression to adenocarcinoma (Abstr. 120a, 700, 837) and in predicting the response of IBD patients to biological therapy (Abstr. 1058, 1059).

Chris Sheasgreen, MD, FRCPC
Clinical Fellow (IBD)
Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto

 

Dr. Chris Sheasgreen is currently an Advanced Clinical Fellow in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases through the University of Toronto at Mount Sinai Hospital. He completed his Internal Medicine (2014) and Gastroenterology (2016) training at McMaster University and his M.D. at the University of Ottawa (2011).

Michael Gould, MD, FRCP(C)
William Osler Health Centre
Medical Director & President, Vaughn Endoscopy Clinic
Vice President, Toronto Digestive Disease Associates Research Group
Director, Canadian Digestive Health Foundation

 

Dr. Michael Gould is currently the Medical Director and President of the Vaughan Endoscopy Clinic, Vice President of The Toronto Digestive Disease Associates Research Group, and a Board member of the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation. He graduated from Medicine at University of Toronto in 1985 and completed his GI fellowship in 1991. He has a busy clinical practice, including over 1400 colonoscopies per year. Dr. Gould is a current member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) committee setting the standards for out-patient facilities. He has participated in quality and standards initiatives with the CPSO, Cancer Care Ontario, Canadian Association of Gastroenterology and Ontario Association of Gastroenterology, since 1999. He speaks frequently on the topic of Quality Endoscopy. He is a former Chief of Medicine at the William Osler Health Centre, a Past President of the Ontario Association of Gastroenterology (OAG), and a Past Co-Chair of the Specialist Coalition of Ontario (SCO).

Louis W. C. Liu, MEng, PhD, MD, FRCPC
Div of Gastroenterology, Dept of Medicine
Co-Director, Metabolism Nutrition Unit, Undergraduate MD Program
Director, Clinical Motility Investigation Unit, UHN

 

Dr. Louis Liu completed his Bachelor. Masters and PhD in Engineering at McMaster University. Thereafter, he pursued his medical training and received his Doctor of Medicine in 1998 at McMaster University. Currently, he is a Gastroenterology Consultant in the University Health Network (UHN). His clinical interest is in Neurogastroenterology and Intestinal Motility. He is the director of the GI Clinical Motility unit at UHN. He takes an active role in undergraduate and post-graduate and medical education, locally and internationally. He is the course director of the Metabolism and Nutrition Unit in the University of Toronto (UoT), undergraduate MD program and is the UoT lead of the GI Residency Training Program in Addis Ababa University of Ethiopia. He has authored ~100 publications, including scientific proceeding abstracts, peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

David Morgan, MD, MSc., FRCP(C)
Head, Service of Gastroenterology
St. Joseph's Healthcare, Hamilton
Associate Professor, Division of Gastroenterology
McMaster University

 

Dr. David Morgan completed his undergraduate training in Human Genetics at McGill University. He did graduate studies including a Masters in Population Genetics. His undergraduate medical studies were completed at McMaster University and Post Graduate studies including Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology, were also completed at McMaster. Dr. Morgan took an additional fellowship year with special attention paid to advanced endoscopic techniques including YAG laser.

Dr. Morgan has published on topics such as GI Bleeding, Quality of Life in Cancer Care, Use of Proton Pump Inhibitors and The Prevention of Bleeding from GI Vascular Lesions. Dr. Morgan has participated on several CAG Consensus Panels dealing with such topics as CRC Screening. Dr. Morgan is a member of several international societies, is a Past President of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology and is the current Vice President of the Ontario Association of Gastroenterology. Dr. Morgan is an Associate Editor for the ACP Journal Club and Evidence Based Medicine and has acted as a reviewer for many journals.

Dr. Morgan is on the Faculty at McMaster University and is involved in teaching at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. He serves on many university and hospital committees. Dr. Morgan is Head of the Service of Gastroenterology and Deputy Chief of Medicine at St. Joseph's Hospital, Hamilton.