[Postoperative small intestinal motility after abdominal surgery]

Abstract

After abdominal surgery there is a postoperative small bowel ileus. We evaluate whether the duration of the small bowel ileus is depending on the kind of surgery or not. Over a needle catheter jejunostomy a 3-tip transducer was placed into the distal jejunum. At the end of the operations a pressure detector was connected to measure the intraluminal pressure continuously over five days. Group A consisted of three patients undergoing explorative laparotomy because of inoperable gastric cardia cancer, and group B of eight patients who underwent gastrectomy. In none of the patients a normal empty stomach motility pattern, determined by the activity of a migrating myoelectric complex (MMC) was detectable. In group A the normal MMC-activity returned after 24 +/- 4.5 h and in group B after 82 +/- 25 h. Therefore the duration of the loss of the interdigestive myoelectric complex appeared to be dependent upon the type of surgery.