Hello, I'm Bethany Dorfler, Senior Clinical Dietitian at Northwestern Medicine in the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. I specialize in working with patients with eosinophilic disorders and allergic bowel diseases. Welcome to Module 9. This instructional module is focused on the nutritional tips and tricks, the nuts and bolts of dietary therapy, how to do it, what resources you need in your clinic, and what to tell your patients. It also focuses on nutrition assessment. So it's important to make sure that your patients are well and have good nutritional status before they embark on any type of restrictive therapy. So this module will not only give you tips to be able to assess your patients, but also all of the strategies that your team will need. If you are interested in working with a dietician but don't have one on your team yet, this module is really designed for proficiency of getting your team up to speed on how to roll out the dietary therapies in EOE. Anytime we integrate nutritional therapies into our care plan, it's very easy to focus on what patients cannot eat. And while that is a very important part of an elimination diet to treat eosinophilic disorders, this module also provides enough guidance on what foods patients can choose and how to keep patients healthy, not just avoid their allergens. Some guidance on using this module in your practice. First, the module outlines how to assess the nutritional wellness of your patients. This is important before embarking on any type of elimination diet. If you feel your patient is unwell or is nutritionally compromised, there's guidance in this module to halt the elimination diet, remediate the nutritional issues before proceeding. The other aspect of this module that is critical when you're using it with patients is knowing what's in food. There's considerable resources about label reading, where to find some of these hidden triggers, and how patients can build a meal plan around avoiding the triggers. Finally, we also give some educational materials that are available to you to use with your patients on identifying where these triggers may be hiding in common everyday foods and how to naturally work around it. Again, the really important message for patients is not only what I want you to not eat, but these are the healthy foods that need to be part of your diet so that we keep you well while we are figuring out what's triggering your esophagus. One exciting opportunity about having these modules available to you is that you should not overlook dietary therapy. Patients want it, and they're not always sure how to get started. You as a clinician may not feel comfortable guiding them. The goal of modules 9 and also 8 is to look full spectrum, selecting the right diet therapy, and then as you move into module 9, actually structuring that intervention for your patients. A few ways to really use this. There needs to be enough time dedicated to educating patients on what foods you collectively decide you're going to restrict, what is the endoscopic intervention after they eliminate those foods and the timeline, as well as how you reintroduce foods. We also highlight some of the nutritional wellness parameters, making sure that your patients are getting enough healthy food. This is really an important aspect of dietary therapy. Don't shy away from it. Use this as a resource to guide your clinical care. Good luck, and I hope this is helpful for you in your practice.

eosinophilic disorders

dietary therapy

elimination diets

nutritional assessment

food triggers