Dr. Emelie Helou

I completed my internal medicine training at the University of Minnesota, and my general gastroenterology and hepatology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Thereafter, I stayed at Mayo for an additional year pursuing additional training in interventional endoscopy procedures.|Following my training, I was appointed as instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and was part of the interventional endoscopy team at Massachusetts General Hospital from 2019 until 2021. I decided to return to Minnesota given my roots in the state and to help build the interventional endoscopy program at St. Cloud Hospital. I am an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition.|As Director of Interventional Endoscopy, I strive to provide excellent and evidence-based medical care and delineate areas of unmet needs and opportunities for discovery.|My area of interest and work includes clinical outcomes in interventional endoscopy, Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography, Endoscopic Ultrasound, Bariatric endoscopy, and other therapeutic endoscopy techniques. I also have an interest in endoscopic resection of premalignant and early malignant gastrointestinal lesions. I performed the first endoscopic full-thickness resection of a colon cancer site at Massachusetts General Hospital and started this program here at St. Cloud Hospital in 2021. I also started the Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) Program at CentraCare in April 2023.|Why I Love My Work|My parents and uncles were physicians, and I was able to appreciate the unique opportunity and privilege of working closely with patients and their families. No matter how difficult a diagnosis is, there is always hope, a plan and a way to deal with it. Healing has many facets. Few careers offer this privilege!|What I enjoy most about my job is the ability to know patients well and work with them and their families to come up with a plan that works best for their situation. Although we study diseases and conditions often presented uniformly in textbooks, no two patients are identical in how an illness affects them.|I have done my residency, fellowship, and an advanced endoscopy fellowship training in Minnesota. I came to appreciate the quality of life that Minnesota offers. Minnesota is home to towering medical facilities, among which CentraCare is a major institution with excellent resources, incredible infrastructure and outstanding colleagues that allow me to better treat patients and offer them the best diagnostic and therapeutic options.|Getting to Know Me|Central Minnesota is a beautiful community with a tradition of solidarity in a state known for its natural beauty and enthralling landscape. I am a big film aficionado. In fact, I was familiar with Glencoe, Minnesota, years before I came here through Louis Malle works, the famous French film director. I am also a big rock, jazz and blues fan!. Dr. Bazerbachi is rated as a Distinguished provider by MediFind in Endoscopy. His top areas of expertise are Hereditary Pancreatitis, Acute Pancreatitis, Sclerosing Cholangitis, Endoscopy, and Pancreas Transplant.

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