Kyle Staller, MD, MPH, is a gastroenterologist and the director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Laboratory at Mass General.

Kyle Staller, MD, MPH

IBS-C Treatment Cycling Linked to Higher Healthcare Utilization

Irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C)

 practice, and its management is complicated by a crowded therapeutic landscape and persistent patient dissatisfaction.

A new real-world analysis presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2026 in Chicago, IL, sheds light on a pattern that many clinicians recognize but rarely quantify: the cycle of stopping, restarting, and switching IBS-C medications, and the consequent downstream burden it places on both patients and providers.

“Our question was, with all of the different agents that are out there, what is the journey that patients go on in terms of switching from different agents, one agent to another, stopping or restarting an agent, and do those stops and starts correlate with increased healthcare resource utilization?” study author Kyle Staller, MD, MPH, Massachusetts General Hospital, told HCPLive.

The observational analysis drew on nationwide community gastroenterology practice data collected between January 2018 and February 2025, identifying 31,465 adults who had used ≥ 1 IBS-C medication and had a minimum of 365 days of follow-up. Treatment changes including starts, drops, swaps, and add-ons were tracked by medication type and dose. Regression analyses examined associations between patient characteristics, treatment change rates, GI-related healthcare resource utilization (HCRU), and patient portal activity.

Over a mean follow-up of 5.1 years, 41% of patients changed IBS-C treatments at least once. The mean number of treatment changes was approximately 1 per 5 years, but the nature of those changes was striking: roughly 60% were cycles, or patients returning to a previously used medication rather than switching to an agent with a different mechanism of action.

"Many patients are actually doing the same thing over and over again, hoping to get better results the second time," Staller said. "There is a real opportunity to consider alternative treatments when someone has failed one treatment for one reason or another."

“Many patients are actually doing the same thing over and over again, hitting their head against the same wall hoping to get better results, perhaps the second time they do it," Staller said. “I think there is a real opportunity here to consider alternative treatments when someone has failed one treatment for one reason or another.”

Each treatment change was associated with a 9% increase in GI-related HCRU and an 11% increase in patient portal messaging, a finding Staller flagged as particularly relevant given the growing burden of inbox management on gastroenterologists. The top decile of HCRU utilizers averaged > 6 GI-related encounters per year.

Patients with psychiatric comorbidities, somatic pain disorders, and those covered by Medicaid were approximately 20% more likely to have higher treatment change rates. Of note, these same groups are among the highest healthcare utilizers in IBS more broadly.

Staller framed the findings as a call to action on two fronts. First, clinicians should be more deliberate about steering patients toward therapeutic alternatives rather than medication restarts when a treatment has already failed. Second, identifying high-risk patients early may allow for targeted interventions that reduce both treatment cycling and its associated resource burden.

"These are the patients that we need to think about targeting with alternative types of treatments," he said. "The reason for a break is probably because of lack of satisfaction with their current treatment options."

Editor's note: Staller reports disclosures with AbbVie, Ardelyx, Gemelli, Salix, and Takeda.

Scott L, Fossa A, Staller K, et al. Patient Factors Associated With Irritable Bowel Syndrome With Constipation (IBS-C) Treatment Changes. Presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2026; Chicago, IL; May 2–5, 2026.

Brooks A. Despite Advances, IBS Continues to Impact Patients' Daily Lives, Productivity. 

. August 8, 2025. Accessed May 19, 2026. 

https://www.hcplive.com/view/despite-advances-ibs-continues-to-impact-patients-daily-lives-productivity

Videos

Kyle Staller, MD, MPH, explains new real-world data showing 41% of IBS-C patients change treatments at least once, with each switch driving higher HCRU and provider portal burden.

Treatment Cycling in IBS-C Drives Greater Healthcare Resource Utilization

Breaking Down New AGA Gastroparesis Guidelines, With Kyle Staller, MD, MPH

Gastroparesis, a chronic disorder of delayed gastric emptying, imposes heavy patient and healthcare burdens. Long hampered by inconsistent diagnoses, limited therapies, and inconclusive data, the field recently gained new guidelines from the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) aimed at standardizing care while recognizing ongoing evidence gaps.

on September 19, 2025, was developed by an 8-member panel and offers 12 conditional recommendations for the diagnosis and management of the complex gastric motility disorder, including use of 4-hour gastric emptying tests, use of metoclopramide or erythromycin as initial pharmacologic treatment, and shared patient-physician decision making for other treatment recommendations.

For further insight into the key takeaways from this guideline, the editorial team of 

 Gastroenterology spoke with guideline author Kyle Staller, MD, MPH, director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Laboratory at Mass General.

Check out part 1 of the interview with Staller 

“I think one of the reasons that clinical trial data and really clinical experience data has been so disappointing in gastroparesis is a lack of a definition as to what defines gastroparesis,” Staller explained to 

. “Our first statement really concerns, how do we actually do this?”

For individuals with suspected gastroparesis, the AGA guideline includes conditional recommendation against the use of a 2-hour or shorter gastric emptying study compared with a 4-hour gastric emptying study to evaluate for delayed gastric emptying. Staller says this is because in many patients, the diagnosis is either missed or made inappropriately with use of shorter studies.

He goes on to acknowledge the controversy of recommending a longer diagnostic test, which he says requires more resources but is “the key to making a consistent diagnosis.”

Regarding treatment, the guideline conditionally recommends using metoclopramide and erythromycin as first-line therapies, something Staller notes poses another potential source of controversy.

“These drugs are far from perfect, and I don't want people to get the idea that just because they're the only things that we suggest for in this particular [document] means that these are the only things that you'll use, but they are the only things that met our threshold of evidence, this sort of minimal clinically important difference,” he explained. “Those are what we recommend as first line treatment, but we recognize that many patients will fail these for one reason or another, be it side effects or lack of efficacy, and will need to go on to second line treatments.”

In the guideline, the AGA issued conditional recommendations against the use of domperidone, prucalopride, aprepitant, nortriptyline, buspirone, and cannabidiol as first-line therapies for gastroparesis, additionally conditionally recommending against the routine initial use of gastric peroral endoscopic pyloromyotomy (G-POEM) or gastric electrical stimulation. No recommendation was given regarding the use of surgical pyloromyotomy and surgical pyloroplasty.

“I [don’t think any] of us would argue that you should be using any of these medications as first line therapy, but in a shared decision making model, a lot of these would be very much useful for second line therapy,” Staller said. “We wanted to say that in the aggregate population that we have, which we've already acknowledged is very heterogeneous, that many patients would benefit from these, but many would not.”

Rather than seeing the guideline and thinking there is no hope for gastroparesis patients based on all of the therapies recommended against as first-line treatment, Staller emphasizes that he wants readers to understand the document’s nuances and recognize the second-line treatment options that exist.

Editors’ Note: Relevant disclosures for 

 include Focus Medical Communications, Retalsis, Anji, and Ardlix.

Brooks A. AGA Releases Gastroparesis Clinical Practice Guideline, Highlights Unmet Needs. 

. September 19, 2025. Accessed October 1, 2025. 

https://www.hcplive.com/view/aga-releases-gastroparesis-clinical-practice-guideline-highlights-unmet-needs

Staller describes key takeaways from the 12 conditional recommendations made in the American Gastroenterological Association’s new gastroparesis guideline.

Controversy and Clarity in New AGA Gastroparesis Guidelines, With Kyle Staller, MD, MPH

“I think part of the unmet need [in gastroparesis], and part of that difficulty, is the fact that it's been really defined by a heterogeneous set of standards,” Kyle Staller, MD, MPH, director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Laboratory at Mass General and first author of the guidelines, told 

. “One of the goals of this guideline was to really present a more homogeneous approach to sort of say who we are talking about when we talk about gastroparesis.”

Staller notes the heterogeneous definition of gastroparesis and subsequent heterogeneous populations seen in clinical trials have led to a lack of success in these trials, stalling therapeutic progress. He also cites controversy regarding whether or not gastroparesis is its own condition or a manifestation of functional dyspepsia.

With a lack of robust evidence across several topics covered in the guidance, Staller explains why the document could not recommend several treatments, including medications and interventions widely relied upon by clinicians. Following clinician, patient, and industry stakeholders voicing concerns that such recommendations might send a message of hopelessness or risk insurance companies withdrawing coverage, the AGA clarified that the document is aimed squarely at clinicians, not payers or policymakers.

Importantly, the guidelines include language emphasizing that while large trials may not show clear benefit, individual patients can still derive meaningful relief from certain therapies.

“We wanted to provide a very careful, very objective evaluation of the existing evidence, and I think all of us are a little disappointed in that the level of evidence that came out, but this should allow you to have a very informed, shared decision making conversation between the clinician and the patient so that you can figure out what priorities each of you may have going forward, and what's the level of evidence underlying those priorities,” Staller said.

Looking ahead, Staller says the field may soon see incremental progress in the form of new data on existing medications and procedures.

“I wouldn't say that there is breaking news coming right away in the field of gastroparesis, but I do think that there are some trials where if this guideline were written when those results come out, it may actually change the level of evidence to push some more things into the ‘suggest for’ type of category,” Staller said.

. September 19, 2025. Accessed September 24, 2025. 

Staller describes unmet needs in gastroparesis and key recommendations for its diagnosis and management from the new AGA guidelines.

Kyle Staller, MD, MPH

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