Balloon dilation when using double-balloon enteroscopy for small-bowel strictures associated with ischemic enteritis.

摘要

Ischemic bowel diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders that have as their unifying feature hypoxia of the small intestine and/or large intestine. Small-bowel ischemia has been classified into extensive ischemia and seg-mental ischemia. Segmental ischemia is uncommon and can be associated with a variety of clinical manifestations but usually lacks severe systemic consequences. Segmental ischemia is caused by various conditions, such as limited embolism or thrombosis in the setting of hypercoag-ulable states, trauma, strangulation, collagen-vascular diseases, vasculitis, radiation injury, and drugs. In this article, segmental enteritis caused by ischemia is referred to as ischemic enteritis. It can result in chronic enteritis complicated by strictures. If a stricture has developed, the presentation can be that of partial or complete small-bowel obstruction. In these circumstances, surgery is often required for diagnosis as well as treatment because of the difficulty of placing an endoscope into the small bowel.