Intestinal failure and intestinal transplantation: new therapy for individuals sustaining large losses of bowel: a review.

Intestinal failure is a concept developed to define the situation wherein either severe primary gastrointestinal disease or a surgically induced short bowel syndrome exists and prevents an adequate oral intake of nutrients such that parenteral nutrition is required. Typically, because of disease associated problems, total parenteral nutrition is required in most cases of intestinal failure. The major cause of intestinal failure in both adults and children is surgical resection resulting in a short bowel syndrome. The clinical signs and symptoms of a short bowel syndrome include any combination of the following: intractable diarrhea, steatorrhea, failure to thrive, acidosis, dehydration, trace element deficiency syndromes, hypoproteinemia, hypovitaminosis, and anemia. It is often difficult to predict at the time of a bowel resection whether or not a short bowel syndrome will occur postoperatively. This is the case because any of a number of confounding problems such as (a) difficulty in precisely estimating the length of the remaining small bowel at the time of the operation, (b) the presence of disease in the residual small bowel that can produce further shortening or impair residual intestinal function, and (c) the presence or absence of the ileal cecal valve, which can be critical in determining the adaptability of the residual bowel.