[The significance of pathophysiologic principles of intestinal secretion for the diagnosis and therapy of ileus].

Intestinal obstruction is always accompanied by intestinal hypersecretion. This phenomenon explains the initial symptoms like bilious vomiting and abdominal distension as well as the later clinical signs of hypovolaemia and shock. The proximal hypersecretion in intestinal obstruction is incompletely understood and in the surgical literature on ileus only little attention has been paid to this crucial observation. In analogy to secretory diarrhea and because of own clinical observations we conclude that bowel contamination caused by intestinal stasis is mainly responsible for the increased intestinal secretion in bowel obstruction.