It is one of the main clinical manifestations of intestinal obstruction, which means that the intestine is “blocked” and the contents of the intestine cannot pass through smoothly, accumulating more and more in the gastrointestinal tract and making the intestine more and more distended, causing various systemic crises. And if frequent paroxysmal colic around the umbilicus occurs, you should be more alert.
Extra-intestinal causes: adhesions and adhesion zone compression Adhesions can cause intestinal folding and twisting and cause obstruction. Congenital adhesions are more common in children; adhesions from abdominal surgery or intra-abdominal inflammation are the most common cause of intestinal obstruction in adults, but in a few cases there may be no history of abdominal surgery or inflammation; incarcerated external or internal hernia; intestinal torsion is often due to adhesions; extra-intestinal tumor or abdominal mass compression.
Causes of the intestinal canal itself: congenital stenosis and closed-hole malformations; stenosis due to inflammatory tumor anastomosis surgery and other factors. For example, inflammatory bowel disease, intestinal tuberculosis, radiation injury, intestinal tumors (especially colon tumors), intestinal anastomosis, etc.; intestinal stenosis is less common in adults and is mostly caused by polyps or other intestinal lesions.
Intra-intestinal causes: Intestinal obstruction due to masses of roundworms foreign bodies or fecal masses etc. is no longer common. Cases of large gallstones entering the intestinal cavity through the gallbladder or common bile duct-finger fistula, producing gallstone intestinal obstruction, have been reported.
Mechanical intestinal obstruction is characterized by paroxysmal colic hyperacusis and asymmetric abdominal distension, whereas paralytic intestinal obstruction is characterized by absence of colic and uniform distension of the whole abdomen; spastic intestinal obstruction may have sudden onset of severe abdominal pain and disappearance of intermittent irregular bowel X-ray abdominal plain films can help to distinguish them: in mechanical obstruction, intestinal distention is limited to the intestinal segment above the obstruction site; in paralytic obstruction, all the stomach, small intestine and colon are distended to approximately the same extent; in spastic obstruction, the intestine is not obviously distended and dilated. Frontal and lateral abdominal plain films taken every minute to observe the movement of the small intestine can often distinguish mechanical from paralytic intestinal obstruction.
Symptoms and signs of typical intestinal obstruction are not difficult to diagnose, but those lacking typical manifestations are more difficult to diagnose. X-ray abdominal fluoroscopy or radiography is helpful to confirm the clinical diagnosis and determine the site of intestinal obstruction. In normal people, only a small amount of gas can be seen in the stomach and colon on abdominal radiographs. Acute small bowel obstruction usually takes hours for sufficient fluid and gas to accumulate in the intestine. The degree of intestinal dilatation after hours of significant fluid plane formation certainly reaches diagnostic levels, and colonic obstruction progresses to the point where radiographic signs appear much longer Inflated small bowel, especially jejunum, can be identified by the circumferential folds across the intestinal canal and can be distinguished from a colon with colonic pouching. In addition, the typical small intestine bowel pattern is mostly in the central part of the abdomen, while the colon shadow is in the peri-abdomen or in the pelvis.