[Treatment of gastrointestinal disease with elemental diets (author's transl)].

Elemental diets are ballast-free formula diets, which are fully resorbed in the upper jejunum, and which do scarcely stimulate gastric, pancreatic or bile secretion; they contain no antigens, decrease intestinal work load, and do influence most probably the composition of the intestinal bacterial flora in a quantitative as well as qualitative way. Therefore such dietary preparations are used in gastrointestinal diseases. Their indications have not yet been clarified sufficiently by controlled therapeutic trials, however they are used with apparent success, especially in ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, in malabsorption syndromes, and in patients with intestinal fistula.