[MUSIC PLAYING] I'm Noa Krugliak Cleveland. I'm a gastroenterologist, and I specialize in inflammatory bowel disease, which is primarily ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.


My grandmother was a pediatrician. And she became a pediatrician during World War II, which were very troubling times. And my father became a gastroenterologist after her. And so I was very close with both and got to learn their personal stories, both of which required a lot of tenacity and went through a lot of hardship to do this, but had also a lot of drive as they were similar to me, were very fascinated with the human body, and really cared for their patients.


So I dreamed after intimately spending time with them, really getting to know the human body, and being able to help patients and assist patients to get to their optimal quality of life. And one of the more shaping experiences I've had really early-- I was five years old. I was with my-- staying at my father's. And he was called in for an emergency endoscopy, and I got to see my first upper endoscopy at five.


Uniquely, I'm also an expert in intestinal ultrasound, so that's a unique procedure that is now offered in the United States. That has been around, actually, for several decades in Europe. But this is a procedure that is noninvasive, that allows real-time monitoring of patients' disease in the clinic visit. So patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease who don't always feel exactly what's going on inside should have an objective assessment of how they're doing, and that allows us to do it while I see them in clinic. And both the patient and I get to see it on a screen and make real-time decisions.


My philosophy is to tailor my care to patients and their individual needs. And although I care for patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, each patient has very different disease, different experiences, different knowledge of their disease and understanding, and certainly a different course of disease. So it's important to me that, one, I explain to patients what they're going to experience, what it is that we're going to do together, and, importantly, if they ever need me, they always know that I will be available to them, especially at times that they're unwell.


Through my experience with intestinal ultrasound and being one of the first people to train in bowel ultrasound, bring it to the United States, I've had the privilege to interact with many experts in bowel ultrasound across the globe and also patients from around the world, as we're hosting training throughout the United States, North America, and really Europe and Asia. So getting to see how this seemingly simple technology, ultrasound, is really changing patients' lives and IBD care has been a privilege of my career. It's really been tremendous.