Dennis M. Jensen, MD

• Director, VA-CURE Hemostasis Research Group
• Principal Investigator and Director, NIH T32 GI Training Grant
• Associate Director, UCLA CURE: Digestive Diseases Research Group

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 and a member of the UCLA Center for Ulcer Research and Education:Digestive Diseases Research Core Center (UCLA/CURE: DDRCC) 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 has been a key investigator and on the executive committee of CURE. He is a staff physician in the UCLA Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases (UCLA DDD) and also a 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 has performed clinical-outcomes research, teaching, and patient care at UCLA and West LA VA Hospitals for more than three and a half decades.

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 including as the principal investigator (PI) or a co-investigator on multiple 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 other 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 research and career development funding for ongoing, clinical-endoscopic-outcomes studies and mentored training. The first is a 5-year grant from the Veterans Administration (VA) Research Service (Merit Review clinical grant) for 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 an ongoing RCT, previously supported by an ASGE Research Foundation grant and the NIH NIDDK P30 UCLA (CURE):DDRCC grant, which now continues with other UCLA research funds of Dr. Jensen. It is an RCT of severe non-variceal UGI hemorrhage (e.g. peptic ulcers or Dieulafoy’s lesions) comparing outcomes of patients treated with large over-the-endoscope hemoclipping (OTSC) or standard endoscopic hemostasis. A third grant of Dr. Jensen is an investigator-initiated research study funded by Medtronic for a prospective study at WLA VA which will soon include USC where Dr. Jensen’s former research trainees are now full-time GI faculty. 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. This NIH T32 GI training grant was competitively renewed for 5 more years, starting July 1, 2021. 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. This 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 327 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 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 for over 35 years. Many of his trainees are full-time faculty or clinical faculty of 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 21 years and previously through an NIH K24 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. 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 manuscripts and teaching atlases 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 and GI guidelines for GI hemorrhage treatment or prevention.