[Digestive insufficiency and artificial feeding. Theoretical and practical aspects (author's transl)].

The relatively new concept of digestive insufficiency was born as a result of prolonged artificial nutrition. Digestive insufficiency may be of organic, functional or mixed nature; its medical and surgical causes are numerous. Artificial nutrition has become a major therapeutic adjuvant in all types of digestive insufficiency. By acting as a substitute for the intestinal function, artificial nutrition permits better tolerance of specific treatments thanks to the nutritional rehabilitation and intestinal rest which it provides for as long as the patients' malnutrition and digestive lesions make it necessary.