Chronic Stomach Pain: Which Specialist to See in Dubai

Abdominal pain that has lasted months is one of the harder problems to route correctly, because the
abdomen contains organs belonging to half a dozen specialties and the pain rarely respects those
boundaries.

Why a generalist should go first

Persistent abdominal pain can originate in the stomach, intestines, liver, gallbladder, pancreas,
kidneys, urinary tract, reproductive organs, abdominal wall or spine. It can also be referred from the
chest, driven by medication, or generated by anxiety — which is a genuine physiological mechanism
and not a dismissal.

Choosing a specialist before the system is identified means guessing. A gastroenterologist will
investigate the gut thoroughly and, if the problem is gynaecological or urological, you will have spent
a consultation and a set of investigations to establish a negative.

An internist or GP works across the whole differential: history, examination, basic bloods, and
imaging where indicated. That process usually narrows the field considerably before anyone books a
procedure. See do you need a GP referral in the UAE?.

What gastroenterologists do

Gastroenterology covers the digestive tract from oesophagus to rectum, plus liver, gallbladder and
pancreas. The specialty combines medical management with endoscopic procedures — gastroscopy to
examine the upper tract, colonoscopy for the lower.

Common territory includes reflux and its complications, peptic ulcer disease, inflammatory bowel
disease such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, coeliac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, liver
disease including fatty liver, and bowel cancer screening.

MyLinks lists gastroenterology as a small distinct field — around 23 practitioners —
against more than 1,000 in internal medicine.
As with endocrinology, this reflects how the work is organised rather than a shortage of care:
internists manage a great deal of digestive disease, and hospital units carry expertise that is not
separately listed.

Symptoms that need prompt attention

Most chronic abdominal pain is not sinister, but some features change the urgency and should not wait
for a routine appointment.

Unintentional weight loss. Blood in the stool, or black tarry stools. Persistent vomiting. Difficulty
swallowing, or food sticking. A change in bowel habit lasting more than a few weeks, particularly over
the age of forty-five. Anaemia found on a blood test without an obvious cause. A palpable lump. Pain
that wakes you from sleep. Fever alongside abdominal pain.

Any of these warrants prompt assessment and usually direct specialist referral rather than a period
of watchful waiting.

Irritable bowel syndrome and the diagnosis-of-exclusion problem

A large proportion of chronic abdominal pain is eventually attributed to irritable bowel syndrome.
This diagnosis is often delivered poorly and received badly, so it is worth setting out properly.

IBS is a genuine condition with real physiological mechanisms involving gut motility, visceral
sensitivity and the interaction between gut and nervous system. It is not a way of saying nothing is
wrong, and it is not a psychological diagnosis, though stress commonly worsens it as it worsens many
physical conditions.

It is, however, diagnosed partly by excluding other things, which means the quality of the exclusion
matters. A diagnosis made after appropriate investigation is trustworthy. One made after a five-minute
consultation and no tests is a hypothesis.

If you have been given this label without investigation, and particularly if you have any of the
warning features above, it is reasonable to ask what has been excluded and how.

Transferring care to a new doctor

Chronic abdominal problems often involve several clinicians over years, and people frequently move
between them — changing insurance, relocating between emirates, or simply losing confidence in a
plan that is not working. Doing that well makes a real difference to the care you get next.

Request your records before you leave rather than after. You are entitled to copies, and a facility
you have left is slower to help than one you are still attending. Ask specifically for endoscopy and
imaging reports, not just clinic letters — the actual reports carry detail that summaries lose.

Records-sharing systems help but do not solve this. NABIDH in Dubai and Malaffi in Abu Dhabi connect
licensed facilities within their own emirate; sharing across the emirate boundary is less complete. See
your medical records and Malaffi.

Write your own chronology before the first appointment with a new doctor: when symptoms started, how
they have changed, what investigations were done and when, what treatments were tried and what happened.
For a problem spanning years this is genuinely valuable, and no clinician can reconstruct it as
accurately as you can.

Be honest about why you are moving. “The previous plan didn’t help and I want a fresh look”
is a perfectly reasonable thing to say, and more useful than allowing a new clinician to assume the
history is straightforward.

Where to look

Start with internal medicine or
general practice listings for initial assessment.
Internal medicine has real depth — over 1,000 listed practitioners, with 459 in Abu Dhabi and 390
in Dubai — so finding someone is not the constraint.

For specialist digestive care, ask your internist which gastroenterologist they refer to. In a small
field that recommendation is worth more than any search, and it usually comes with a faster
appointment. What to ask at a first specialist appointment covers making the
consultation count.

Food, intolerance and the elimination habit

Diet is the first thing most people change when their stomach hurts, and the changes are often
unhelpfully broad.

There is a meaningful difference between allergy, intolerance and sensitivity. Food allergy is an
immune response, can be severe, and is diagnosable. Intolerance — lactose intolerance is the
classic example — is an enzymatic or digestive problem producing predictable symptoms without an
immune mechanism. Beyond these lies a large territory of self-identified food sensitivity that is real
in its effects but harder to characterise.

Coeliac disease sits apart and matters here, because it is commonly missed and because the test only
works properly if you are still eating gluten. People who remove gluten first and seek testing later
frequently get an uninterpretable result and face weeks of reintroduction to be tested properly. If you
suspect coeliac disease, ask about testing before you change your diet.

Structured elimination diets can be genuinely useful for IBS, but they work best when supervised and
time-limited, with systematic reintroduction. Open-ended elimination driven by trial and error tends to
narrow the diet progressively without establishing anything, and long-term restriction carries its own
nutritional cost.

Endoscopy: what to expect and when it is warranted

People approach endoscopy with more anxiety than the procedure usually justifies, and sometimes with
less discrimination about whether it is needed.

Gastroscopy examines the oesophagus, stomach and the first part of the small intestine. Colonoscopy
examines the large bowel and requires bowel preparation, which most patients find the least pleasant
part. Both are typically performed with sedation and take well under an hour.

They are indicated when there is a specific question to answer — investigating warning
features, confirming or excluding inflammatory bowel disease, taking biopsies for coeliac disease,
screening for bowel cancer at appropriate ages or with a family history. They are less useful when
performed reflexively for symptoms that do not point to structural disease, and a normal endoscopy in
someone with functional symptoms may reassure briefly without changing management.

If a procedure is proposed, it is entirely reasonable to ask what question it is expected to answer
and what would change depending on the result. A clear answer usually means it is warranted.

The gut and stress

Worth addressing directly, because patients often hear it as dismissal and clinicians often explain
it badly.

The connection between the digestive system and the nervous system is physiological, extensively
studied, and bidirectional. Stress genuinely alters gut motility, sensitivity and secretion. This is
not a suggestion that symptoms are imagined; it is a description of a mechanism.

It also runs the other way. Living with unpredictable abdominal symptoms is itself stressful,
particularly when it constrains work, travel and social life. Treating only the psychological side of
that loop, or only the physical side, tends to underperform.

Where stress is clearly a factor, addressing it is a legitimate part of treatment rather than an
alternative to real treatment. What is not acceptable is being told symptoms are stress-related without
appropriate investigation having been done first.

The practical sequence

Start with a generalist who will look across systems rather than down one. Push for investigation
rather than reassurance if you have any of the warning features. Expect an IBS diagnosis to follow
appropriate exclusion rather than replace it. Keep your own chronology, and carry your own reports
between clinicians. Escalate to gastroenterology when the evidence points at the gut, and ask your
internist who they trust rather than searching a thin directory blind.