Gastric dysrhythmia in infants with gastrointestinal diseases measured by epigastric impedance.

BACKGROUND

Gastrointestinal symptoms have been reported in association with myoelectrical dysrhythmia, where different types of gastric electrical activity have been described. These types of gastric myoelectrical activity and dysrhythmia can be measured by electrogastrography using cutaneous electrodes. Epigastric impedance is a non-invasive method used to study gastric emptying time and gastric phasic activity. At present no study of gastric dysrhythmia, measured with epigastric impedance, has been presented, and the purpose of the present study was to investigate gastric rhythms by means of impedance gastrography in control infants, compared to infants with different gastrointestinal diseases, before and after treatment of their disease.

METHOD

21 patients (age 0-2 months) and 40 healthy infants (age 0-2 months) were investigated. The patients suffered from partial or total intestinal obstruction, necrotizing enterocolitis or pyloric stenosis.All infants were fasting and studied during periods of at least one hour. The patients were examined in the acute state and after treatment when possible.

RESULTS

A pathologic result was found in 90% of the patients. A persistent phasic activity pattern was found in 19 of the 21 patients, high frequency phasic activity in 11 of the 21 patients. Short-term phasic activity was only found in 13 out of 40 of the normal infants (32.5%).

CONCLUSION

Using epigastric impedance we found that infants with partial or total intestinal obstruction had gastric phasic activity, which was not found in the control infants. The origin of the gastric phasic activity patterns is unknown, but they may be related to electrical control activity.