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Wednesday Marie Abaya Sevilla, MD, MPH, CNSC

  • Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
  • Medical Director - Feeding and Swallowing Center, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

Administrative Assistant: Marcy Kegges

Dr. Wednesday Sevilla’s clinical and research interests revolve around pediatric nutrition and feeding. She is trained in pediatric gastroenterology and she has focused specifically on gastrointestinal issues related to nutrition challenges. She is currently an active physician with the Intestinal Care and Rehabilitation Center (ICARE) clinical service providing advanced nutrition support to pediatric patients with intestinal failure and short bowel syndrome. This involves care of patients on long-term home parenteral nutrition. She also manages patients with chronic oral feeding difficulty dependent on home enteral nutrition. As medical director of the Feeding and Swallowing Center (FASC), she works with a multi-professional team in the diagnosis and management pediatric feeding difficulty due to oropharyngeal dysphagia, oral aversion, oral motor non-coordination and developmental delay. Through FASC, she is working with the team on providing the best care for children with oral feeding difficulty with the aim of assisting families during difficult transitions seen in pediatric development. Accordingly, her research has contributed to improvement of management and outcomes of pediatric patients with feeding and nutrition issues. She has published articles and abstracts related to problems encountered in short bowel syndrome. She has recently formed a multidisciplinary research group identifying feeding challenges in the pediatric short bowel syndrome population. She is currently an investigator with the ICARE Patient Registry, actively collecting data measuring outcomes of patients with intestinal failure. Dr. Sevilla is also an active member of the Enteral Nutrition Taskforce of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN); the task force was formed to determine best practices in the management of pediatric patients on home enteral nutrition. 

Professional and Scientific Society Memberships

  • American Academy of Pediatrics, 2006-2012
  • North American Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, 2010-Present
  • American Gastroenterological Association, 2012-Present
  • American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition; member of the Pediatrics Section and Pediatric Intestinal Failure Section, 2012-Present
  • Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplant Association, 2016-Present

Education & Training

  • BS, Biology, University of the Philippines Manila, 1998
  • MD, University of the Philippines Manila, 2003
  • MPH, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, 2010
  • General Pediatrics Residency, University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Pediatrics, 2009
  • Pediatrics Chief Residency, University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Pediatrics, 2010
  • Graduate Internship for Master's in Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, 2010
  • Pediatric Gastroenterology Fellowship, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, 2013

Selected Publications

Irving SY, Rempel G, Lyman B, Sevilla WMA, Northington L, Guenter P and the America Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. Pediatric nasogastric tube placement and verification: Best practice recommendations from the Novel Project. Nutr Clin Pract. 2018;33:921-927. DOI: 10.1002/ncp.10189. PMID: 30187517. 

Harvie LM, Norris A, Sevilla WMA. Soluble fiber use in pediatric short bowel syndrome: a survey on prevailing practices. Nutr Clin Prac.2018;33(4):539-544.  

Sevilla WMA. Nutritional considerations in pediatric chronic disease. Pediatr Rev. 2017 Aug;38(8);343-352. PubMed PMID: 28765197. 

Xiao X, Jones G, Sevilla WA, Stola DB, Magee KE, Haughney M, Mukherjee A, Wang Y, Lowe ME. A carboxyl ester lipase (CEL) mutant causes chronic pancreatitis by forming intracellular aggregates that activate apoptosis. J Biol Chem. 2017 May 12;292(19):7744. PubMed PMID: 28500240. 

Sevilla WMA, McElhanon B. Optimizing transition to home enteral nutrition for pediatric patients. Nutr Clin Pract.2016 Dec;31(6):762-768. PubMed PMID: 27756847. 

Savoie KB, Bachier-Rodrigues M, Johnes TL, Jeffreys K, Papraniku D, Sevilla WMA, Tillman E and Huang EY. Standardization of feeding advancement after neonatal gastrointestinal surgery: Does it improve outcomes? Nutr Clin Pract. 2016 Dec;31(6):810-818. PubMed PMID: 27422689.  

Xiao X, Jones G, Sevilla WA, Stola DB, Magee KE, Haughney M, Mukherjee A, Wang Y, Lowe ME. A carboxyl ester lipase (CEL) mutant causes chronic pancreatitis by forming intracellular aggregates that activate apoptosis. J Biol Chem. 2016 Oct 28;291(44):23224-23236. PubMed PMID:27650499. 

Lyman B, Gutner P, Northington L, Kemper C, Irving S, Wilder K, Duesing L, Yaworski JA, Rempel G, Sevilla WM, Visscher D. Verifying NG tube placement in children. Nursing. 2015 Oct;45(10):8-9. PubMed PMD: 26372231. 

Loverdos I, Swan MC, Shekherdimina S, Al-Rasheed AA, Schneider R, Fish JS, Ngan B, Adelia, K, Lowe ME, Singh VP, Sevilla WA, Langer JC, Gonska T. A case of pancreatitis, panniculitis and polyarthritis syndrome: Elucidating the pathophysiologic mechanisms of a rare condition. J Ped Surg Case Rep. 2015 May;3(5):223-226. PubMed PMID: 27182490.   

Xiao X, Ross LE, Sevilla WA, Wang Y, Lowe ME. Porcine pancreatic lipase related protein 2 has high triglyceride lipase activity in the absence of colipase. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2013 Sep; 1831(9):1435-1441. PubMed PMID: 23770034. 

Academic and Research Interests

  • pediatric feeding difficulty
  • short bowel syndrome
  • dysphagia
  • enteral feeding 
  • parenteral nutrition
  • intestinal rehabilitation
  • intestinal failure