Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-22-2018

Comments

This article is the author’s final published version in World Journal of Transplantation, Volume 8, Issue 6, October 2018, Pages 198-202.

The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.5500/wjt.v8.i6.198. Copyright © Marino & Lauro

Abstract

Short bowel syndrome (SBS) is due to a massive loss of small bowel: the reduction of gut function is below the minimum necessary to maintain health (in adults) and growth (in children) so intravenous supplementation is required. Parenteral nutrition represents the milestone of treatment and surgical attempts should be limited only when the residual bowel is sufficient to increase absorption, reducing diarrhea and slowing the transit time of nutrients, water and electrolytes. The surgical techniques lengthen the bowel (tapering it) or reverse a segment of it: developed in children, nowadays are popular also among adults. The issue is mainly represented by the residual length of the small bowel where ileum has shown increased adaptive function than jejunum, but colon should be considered because of its importance in the digestive process. These concepts have been translated also in intestinal transplantation, where a colonic graft is nowadays widely used and the terminal ileum is the selected segment for a living-related donation. The whole replacement by a bowel or multivisceral transplant is still affected by poor long term outcome and must be reserved to a select population of SBS patients, affected by intestinal failure associated with irreversible complications of parenteral nutrition.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

PubMed ID

30370230

Language

English

Download

Share

COinS