Word: duodenum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...finding of an ulcer in the stomach, as distinct from the more common ulcer of the duodenum, need not mean that the patient must be rushed to surgery for fear of cancer, a team of Boston doctors reported after studying 1,000 cases. They still urge prompt operation for any stomach ulcer if there is reasonable suspicion of malignancy; otherwise, doctors can safely treat the patient for a month and see how the ulcer behaves...
...Girdany's child patients ranged from 14 months to eleven years old. Some had ulcers of the stomach, some of the duodenum. There were 25 girls and 20 boys, and nearly all told the familiar story of feeling intense pain when hungry, often in the middle of the night, and of getting relief after a meal. A few had had recurrent vomiting spells instead of pain -possibly a sign of ulcers that are otherwise overlooked...
Last week the University of California's Dr. Theodore Leonidowitch Althausen suggested an answer: the human body can readjust itself, and learn to function almost normally, with anything more than two feet of jejunum plus the duodenum. Estonian-born Dr. Althausen had previously described a case in which a woman was left with only 18 inches of vital gut she died of malnutrition after three years. Now in Gastroenterology, Dr. Althausen and three colleagues described two cases in which, with but little more small intestine the patients were living normally...
Grubs in the Garden. A 28-year-old California housewife, mother of three was relieved of the ileum and all but two feet of the jejunum, leaving her (with the duodenum) about three feet of small intestine. After two years, her only complaint is diarrhea, usually traceable to fatigue or strain. She does all the housework and scrabbles in the garden without ill effects...
Because such cases are far from common, Dr. Althausen counted himself lucky when, on a visit to Australia last year, he ran across a third and most unusual case A wiry, freckled, 50-year-old seaman named Bergman had been left with only two feet of jejunum and duodenum. He worked on a soot-grimed freighter pitching and rolling across Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania. Althausen and Melbourne's Dr. Ronald Doig made one interesting discovery in studying the sailor: it made no difference to his two feet of small intestine whether he got predigested or ordinary food...