Role of enteric plexuses in the competency of telescoped intestinal valves.

The mechanism of preventing intestinal regurgitation by means of a telescoped intestinal valve has been investigated in this study. Ten telescoped intestinal valves were uniformly created in dogs. A tolerance test to barium reflux was performed before the animals were sacrificed 16 weeks postoperatively, which yielded various barium tolerance values. Statistical analysis revealed that the differences in barium tolerance values in the uniformly constructed valves were closely related to the proportion of the enteric plexuses which contained ganglion cells with normal shapes (r = 0.97, p less than 0.001) and their intestinal segment coverage (r = 0.94, p less than 0.001), but no correlation was found between barium tolerance and the thickness of the valvular musculature (r = 0.04) or the length of the artificial valve (r = 0.39). The results in this study suggest that the intact enteric plexuses play an important role in modulating the competency of the telescoped intestinal valve.