COMMENTARY

Intensive care unit

Critical care dysmotility: abnormal foregut motor function in the ICU/ITU patient

E M M Quigley

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor E M M Quigley
Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, Department of Medicine, Clinical Sciences Building, Cork University Hospital, Cork, Ireland; e.quigley@ucc.ie

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While aspiration and feeding difficulties are well known challenges in the intensive care unit, their pathophysiology has been poorly understood. New information suggests that the critically ill are subject to profound alterations in motor and sensory function of the oesophagus, lower oesophageal sphincter, stomach, and duodenum which go some way to explaining their propensity to reflux and gastroparesis, with their attendant risks

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Keywords: manometry; gastrointestinal motility; pylorus; critical illness; gastric emptying

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

As medicine changes so should all aspects of medical care and knowledge; as more and more patients are subjected to surgical procedures of increasing complexity and risk and as survival rates from catastrophic illness rise, due to advances in surgery, anaesthesia, and intensive care, one would expect an associated growth in awareness of, and research into, the effects of critical illness on gut motor function. However, motor function and dysfunction, in this context, have received scant attention and have remained, for the most part, poorly understood. While a high prevalence of such phenomena as gastro-oesophageal reflux and gastroparesis are assumed, their true rates of occurrence have been scarcely documented. Similarly, while potential consequences of these entities, such as aspiration, oesophagitis, nosocomial pneumonia, feeding difficulties, and even gastric perforation are well known and, justifiably, feared, the effects of critical illness on oesophageal and gastric motor function have been . . . [Full text of this article]

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