Gastric emptying after vagotomy and pyloric ring stretch. A preliminary report.

Using a radioisotope technique, gastric emptyping of a solid meal was measured in 10 pre-operative duodenal ulcer (DU) patients, 10 post-operative truncal vagotomy and pyloroplasty (TV+P), and 8 post-operative truncal vagotomy and pyloric stretch (TV+S) patients. Results show that after the first 20 min, although gastric emptyping after TV+S shows a tendency to reduction in rate compared with TV+P, the difference never reaches statistical significance (p greater than 0.01). When compared with control DU patients, the TV+S group again exhibits a statistically insignificant (p greater than 0.10) tendency to reduction in rate after the first 20 min, whereas the TV+P group shows no such tendency. The significance of these findings is discussed in relation to the use of a pyloric ring stretch as an alternative to pyloroplasty.