Word: jejunum
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...Hiatus. With the small patient under ether, Dr. Swan made a huge incision to open chest and abdomen. He pulled out a loop of the jejunum (uppermost part of the small intestine) and cut it off near the duodenum. Carefully he worked the long, free end upward to the diaphragm. For a time Dr. Swan had to turn his attention back to the dangling duodenum (see chart): he made a T-junction by stitching its attached bit of jejunum into the intestinal tract a couple of feet below the original cut (making a natural outlet for digestive juices...
...much guts does it take to survive? Nature supplies man with an average 25 feet, four-fifths of it in the small intestine (comprising the duodenum, ileum and jejunum). Through the small intestine's walls the body absorbs nourishment. When part of this live plumbing becomes diseased, it can be cut out. But doctors have never known exactly how little could be left without dooming the patient to death from malnutrition...
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...