Vikas Gupta, MD, PhD, is a gastroenterologist who specializes in liver disease and medical weight loss management.
Growing up, Dr. Gupta had a unique perspective of medical education and training. His father switched careers and entered medical school when Dr. Gupta was about 7. “He wasn’t a full-fledged physician until I was in high school, and I got to watch the whole process,” he says. “It struck me as an intellectually interesting and rewarding career path.”
After medical school, Dr. Gupta considered specializing in cardiology, but during internal medical training, his exposure to patients with end-stage liver disease changed his mind.
“I found the physiology of this patient population really interesting and saw opportunities for clinical improvement,” he says. “When your liver doesn’t function well, it can affect your lungs, heart, kidneys, gastrointestinal tract, skin, and brain. By taking care of patients with liver disease, it keeps me thinking about the physiology of all organs.”
As clinical director of the Fatty Liver Disease Program, Dr. Gupta says a major piece of his job is medical weight management. “We are seeing so many patients with liver abnormalities that stem from fatty liver disease that we know will improve with weight loss,” he says. “We have a great team and resources to help patients achieve their weight loss goals. We want to help patients with fatty liver disease avoid developing end-stage liver disease.”
In the clinic, Dr. Gupta likes to keep it simple, “In medical training, we learn so much jargon that is not useful to patients,” he says. “I try to draw diagrams and simplify the terminology to make it easier for patients to understand.”
