Original articlesAlterations in colonic motility and relationship to pain in colonic diverticulosis
Section snippets
Patients and methods
Twelve patients with symptomatic uncomplicated diverticular disease (4 men, 8 women; age range, 39–76 y) were enrolled in this study. The severity of the disease was assessed according to international working team report classifications,15, 16 and was judged to be mild in each patient. All patients experienced abdominal pain and abnormal bowel habits (constipation or, less frequently, alternating constipation and diarrhea) for more than 2 years. Because no patient had symptoms suggestive of
General considerations
The tip of the probe was in the transverse colon in all controls and in 10 patients. In the remaining 2 patients, it was positioned just below the splenic flexure. No significant catheter displacement was observed at the end of the study.
In the 20 controls, overall regular contractile activity comprised 1152 minutes (6.4%) out of 18,000 minutes of all colonic contractile activity over 24 hours (the remaining 10,800 minutes of recording were represented by motor quiescence). In patients with
Discussion
Abnormal colonic motor activity seems to be a consistent feature of patients with diverticular disease.4, 5, 11, 12, 14 It is not known whether abnormal rhythmic patterns of contractions are present in this condition. Such regular contractions have been described in slow-transit constipation22 and in irritable bowel syndrome.23 However, the specificity and relationship of these patterns to symptoms still is defined poorly.
In the present study, we showed that patients with symptomatic
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