The Department of Gastroenterology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, is a national key discipline and national key clinical specialty (authorized by Ministry of Health). The affiliated Endoscopy Center affiliated to the Department is a national training base designated by the Ministry of Health. In the Department, there are currently 52 doctors (including 7 re-hired doctors after retirement), containing 8 doctorial supervisors and 13 master supervisors, and among which 32 are senior professors and 105 nurses. The inpatient ward of the Department has 208 beds with multiple subspecialty groups, including liver disease, biliary and pancreatic disease, upper gastrointestinal disease, lower gastrointestinal disease, endoscopic minimally invasive treatment, and digestive intervention group, and it provides medical care for more than 100,000 people per year for the inpatient wards. The outpatient clinics of Department contains veteran expert clinics, digestive specialist clinics, and digestive disease clinics, treating more than 160,000 patients per year. The Endoscopy Center launched a number of internationally advanced and domestic leading minimally invasive endoscopic technologies, such as endoscopic treatment of early gastrointestinal cancer (Endoscopic Mucosal Resection and Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection), Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), Endoscopic Ultrasonography (EUS) and related treatments, endoscopic hemostasis of massive gastrointestinal bleeding, and those examinations and treatment serve over 120,000 patients per year.

In recent years, the Department has carried out a number of vascular and non-vascular interventional diagnosis and therapies, including minimally invasive interventional treatment for liver cirrhosis, esophageal and gastric variceal bleeding, Budd-Chiari syndrome, refractory ascites, digestive system tumours, gastrointestinal bleeding, obstructive jaundice and other diseases. Among which Transjugular intrahepatic systemic shunt (TIPS) and Balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous obliteration (BRTO) is leading in China. 

In recent 5 years, the Department of Gastroenterology has undertaken more than 20 research projects with the support of the National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Technology, or from international cooperation, among which 6 research projects were awarded ministerial and provincial-level scientific research awards. The researchers in the Department have published more than 200 academic papers in domestic and foreign academic journals and over 60 SCI papers (including Gastroenterology, GUT, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, Radiology, Endoscopy et al), and edited over 10 monographs. The Department aims to improve the clinical level with the help of scientific researches and apply new scientific research results to clinical practice, so as to serve the public.