Dennis M. Jensen, MD

• Director, VA-CURE Hemostasis Research Group
• Principal Investigator and Director, NIH T32 GI Training Grant

Dr. Jensen earned his medical degree at the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle. He completed a medical internship and first-year medical residency at University of Oregon and Affiliated Hospitals. Then he served as a Major in the US Army Medical Corps and was director of a Preventive Medicine Department. Following the Army, he completed a second-year medical residency at Wadsworth Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in Los Angeles and a fellowship in gastroenterology through a joint program of UCLA and Wadsworth VA Hospitals. He has been on the faculty at these institutions since completion of his GI fellowship training at UCLA.

Dr. Jensen is a professor of medicine (in-residence academic series) at the David Geffen School of Medical at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also was associate director of the UCLA/CURE: DDRCC where he also directed the Human Studies Core. He also was a key investigator and on the executive committee of CURE. Currently, he is a staff physician in the UCLA Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases and also a part-time staff physician in the GI Section of the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare Center. He is a member of the UCLA DDD Research Council. He directs the VA-CURE Hemostasis Research Group which performs clinical-outcomes research, teaching, and research mentoring at UCLA and West LA VA Hospitals.

Dr. Jensen’s research interests include multi-center, prospective and randomized controlled trials (RCT’s) of diagnosis and endoscopic hemostasis of gastrointestinal (GI) hemorrhage; primary and secondary prevention of GI bleeding; GI outcomes and health service studies; and technology assessment research related to endoscopy and GI bleeding. He has been the PI or a co-investigator on many multicenter controlled trials including both national and international studies. He has been continuously funded by investigator-initiated, peer reviewed federal grants since he first joined the UCLA faculty.  These include multiple RO1 studies jointly funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Also, he has received research funding from the VA Research Service, Department of Defense, American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE), American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), and industry. He has been a member of different study sections (including the VA Merit Review Board and the NIH Reviewers Reserve for special study sections), a reviewer of NIH K23 and K24 career development awards, and has been a member of site visits to centers proposing research in gastrointestinal endoscopy, randomized controlled trials, GI technology, and GI clinical and outcomes research studies.

Dr. Jensen has four different sources of funding for his research and for career development of others, as principal investigator (PI) and Director of an NIH T32 GI mentored training. The first source of research funding is a Veterans Administration (VA) Research Service Merit Review clinical grant. His current study is a RCT of Doppler endoscopic probe for blood flow monitoring, risk stratification, and focal treatment of arterial blood flow to prevent delayed post-polypectomy induced bleeding in high-risk patients. This is a multicenter RCT involving VA West Los Angeles, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and Los Angeles Kaiser Permanente Hospitals. The second is a research grant from the UCLA Academic Senate as a Faculty Research Grant. This is for studies of iron deficiency anemia in patients after a severe GI hemorrhage. Included are both a database study and a RCT interventional study of intravenous iron compared to oral iron for restoration of iron stores and improvement in patients’ symptoms and functional status. A third grant of Dr. Jensen is an investigator-initiated research study funded by Medtronic for a prospective study at WLA VA which also includes USC where one of Dr. Jensen’s former research trainees and GI colleague (Dr. Rome Jutabha) is now full-time GI faculty member. The investigators are evaluating the diagnostic yield of urgent colon capsule endoscopy compared to angiography or red bleed cell scanning for lesion localization and diagnosis of patients hospitalized with severe hematochezia. The fourth funding source for Dr. Jensen is as the director and PI of an NIH GI T32 training grant which supports research trainees who aspire to become the next generation of investigators and academicians in digestive diseases, GI sciences, and GI surgery. He also recently completed research funding from the UCLA (CURE):Digestive Diseases Research Core Center  grant for which he directed the Human Studies Core for more than 25 years. That NIH P30 Center grant provided scientific core services to support the research of many other CURE investigator’s translational, clinical, database, and outcomes studies.

Dr. Jensen has published more than 300 peer reviewed papers, case reports, chapters, books, editorials, reviews and other reports. He also has published 329 abstracts. He has been on several editorial boards and is a regular reviewer for such peer-reviewed journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Gastroenterology, American Journal of Gastroenterology, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, Endoscopy, Digestive Diseases and Sciences, and the Medical Letter. He has been an invited faculty member of numerous post-graduate GI courses and NIH consensus conferences on GI hemorrhage, endoscopy research, and GI guidelines for GI bleeding, including local, regional, national, and international symposia.

Dr. Jensen has successfully mentored many young clinical, outcomes, and endoscopy investigators for research and career development over the last 35 years. Many of his trainees are full-time faculty or clinical faculty at academic medical centers in the US or abroad. He has completed this mentored research training as the PI and director of the UCLA NIH T32 GI training grant for 23 years and previously through an NIH K24 Mid-career grant for mentoring and clinical research. He has received both local and national awards as a distinguished lecturer and distinguished mentor, educator, and clinical researcher. Dr. Jensen has served on numerous committees of the ASGE and is a past councilor on the ASGE Governing Board. He also served as a member of the ACG Research Committee. He now serves as a member of the Editorial Board for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the main journal for the ASGE. In May 2012, Dr. Jensen was awarded the Rudolf V. Schindler award, the highest award of the ASGE. Dr. Jensen continues to have both local and international research trainees for mentoring who are investigating and publishing abstracts, manuscripts, teaching atlases, reviews, and practice guidelines about GI bleeding (including risk stratification, diagnosis, treatments, outcomes, and prevention), clinical outcomes studies of GI diseases and endoscopy, and RCT’s with cost analyses of new GI endoscopic technologies. He also has a large number of research collaborators both in the US and internationally who are active in ongoing GI investigations and consensus conferences as well as creating new teaching atlases, videos, and GI guidelines for GI endoscopy, GI mentoring, or GI hemorrhage.