[Electrogastrography: responses to food and sham feeding and relationships with gastric emptying of solids in men].

Cutaneous electrogastrography is a non invasive method to study gastric electromechanical activity. The aim of this work was to determine the amplitude of electrogastrographic (EGG) activity a) during fasting, b) after a meal, c) following vagal stimulation by sham feeding, and to determine the relationship between gastric emptying of solids and EGG activity. EGG activity was recorded in eight healthy subjects in various experimental conditions, twice after sham feeding, twice after a meal, and once during the simultaneous scintigraphic assessment of gastric emptying of the solid component of a meal. During one of the sham feeding tests, subjects were intubated and acid secretion was measured. The EGG signal amplitude was continuously monitored and an intercorrelation function (IF) was calculated using the Fast Fourier Transforms of electrical activity recorded by 2 cutaneous electrodes placed on the epigastric area. During fasting, IF was usually of low amplitude with occasional short increases of amplitude. Sham feeding without intubation rarely induced an early and brief increase in IF amplitude (2 of 8 subjects). Sham feeding-induced acid secretion was negatively correlated with IF amplitude (r = 0.78, P = 0.02) suggesting a motor inhibition associated with vagally stimulated acid secretion. When given orally, meals induced an increase in IF amplitude, but there was major intra- and interindividual variations. There was no significant correlation between the IF increase and the half emptying time for solids (r = 0.62, P = 0.10). This study shows that the high variability of EGG activity during fasting considerably hampers the analysis of changes induced by any stimulus.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)