Stuart Jon Spechler MD
Chief, Division of Gastroenterology; Co-Director, Center for Esophageal Diseases, Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas; Co-Director, Center for Esophageal Research, Baylor Scott & White Research Institute, Dallas, TexasStuart Jon Spechler, MD, has been Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Co-Director of the Center for Esophageal Diseases at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, and Co-Director of the Center for Esophageal Research at the Baylor Scott & White Research Institute since January 2017.
From July 1997 to December 2017, Dr. Spechler was the Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology for the VA North Texas Healthcare System, Professor of Medicine, and holder of the Berta M. and Cecil O. Patterson Chair in Gastroenterology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He also had been the Director of the Center for Swallowing Disorders at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts from July 1990 to June 1997.
Dr. Spechler’s research has focused primarily on disorders of the esophagus, especially GERD, Barrett’s esophagus, eosinophilic esophagitis, and esophageal motility disorders. He has chaired three VA Cooperative Studies on medical and surgical treatments for gastroesophageal reflux disease, and published the results of those studies in JAMA and in the New England Journal of Medicine. He described the condition known as “short-segment Barrett’s esophagus” in 1994. He has made important contributions to understanding the complex relationship between GERD and eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), and was the first to propose the notion that a clinical response to PPIs neither rules in GERD nor rules out eosinophilic esophagitis. He also was the first to propose that achalasia and other esophageal motility disorders might have an allergic etiology, and that eosinophilic esophagitis might have mucosal-predominant and muscle-predominant forms.
Dr. Spechler has published more than 400 scientific reports, editorials, review articles, and book chapters on esophageal disorders. He is best known for his work in the areas of GERD, Barrett’s esophagus, eosinophilic esophagitis, and esophageal motility disorders.
He has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals including Gastroenterology, Gut, Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Nature Reviews in Gastroenterology, Current Opinion in Gastroenterology, Digestive Diseases and Sciences, Diseases of the Esophagus, and Foregut.