Baton Rouge General Opens New Hepatology and Liver Disease Clinic

Baton Rouge General is expanding its specialized digestive health services with the opening of a new Hepatology and Liver Disease Clinic led by transplant hepatologist Dr. Gia Landry.

The new clinic, which Baton Rouge General announced today, joins the hospital’s existing Crohn’s and Colitis Center to form the Comprehensive Gastroenterology Institute. This expansion increases the local capacity to manage end-stage liver disease and the complex requirements of the liver transplantation process.

Transplant hepatologists occupy a highly specialized niche within the medical field. Unlike general gastroenterologists, these specialists focus specifically on the management of severe, life-threatening liver conditions and the intensive care required for patients undergoing or recovering from transplants.

Dr. Landry brings a specific focus to the institute, targeting several critical areas of liver pathology. Her clinical expertise includes the diagnosis and management of metabolic liver disease, also known as fatty liver, as well as viral hepatitis, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. She also treats more specialized conditions such as primary biliary cholangitis and autoimmune hepatitis.

The addition of these services addresses a critical need for advanced digestive tract and pancreatic disease management in the Greater Baton Rouge area. By integrating hepatology with the existing inflammatory bowel disease services, the hospital aims to provide a more unified approach to complex gastrointestinal health.

Dr. Landry’s background includes extensive training at some of the nation’s most prominent medical institutions. A New Orleans native, she earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed her internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Her specialized training continued with a fellowship in gastroenterology and hepatology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, followed by a fellowship in transplant hepatology at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Beyond clinical practice, she holds a Master of Public Health in epidemiology from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston. This academic foundation informs her long-standing involvement with state-level health initiatives.

Since 2019, Dr. Landry has served as a clinical expert for the Louisiana Department of Health initiative aimed at eliminating hepatitis C. Her work in this capacity involves addressing the broader epidemiological patterns of viral hepatitis within the state. Her research and published peer-reviewed articles have contributed to the medical community’s understanding of hepatitis C, hepatitis B, and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Her influence on the local medical landscape extends to academic instruction. For more than a decade, she served as a clinical associate professor of medicine at Louisiana State University. She also maintains a role in medical mentorship as the CEO and founder of Med School Admit and Med School Admit Cares, organizations designed to assist undergraduate students with the medical school application process and healthcare careers.

The expansion of the Comprehensive Gastroenterology Institute comes to a hospital system that has served the region for over a century. Baton Rouge General, which opened in 1900, currently operates as a community hospital with more than 600 licensed beds distributed across three campuses. As an accredited teaching hospital since 1991, the facility maintains affiliations with various medical school programs and hosts several residency tracks, including family medicine and internal medicine.

For those seeking more details regarding the new clinic or the hospital’s broader service offerings, information is available at brgeneral.org.

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