Abstract
Small intestinal function is critical to digestive health and patients believe an abnormal reaction to food is responsible for many of their symptoms. Despite this, our ability to assess disturbed function in clinical practice has been limited, particularly after ingestion of the complex nutrients which make up normal food. Recent advances in both wireless capsules and magnetic resonance imaging have provided new insights. This review will briefly describe the limitations of past techniques and focus on how these newer techniques are changing our understanding, particularly of how patients' gastrointestinal tracts respond to food.
Highlights
Our understanding of functional gastrointestinal diseases is limited by our ability to assess function and nowhere it that better illustrated than in the small bowel
Small intestinal function is critical to digestive health and patients believe an abnormal reaction to food is responsible for many of their symptoms
Our ability to assess disturbed function in clinical practice has been limited, after ingestion of the complex nutrients which make up normal food
Summary
Our understanding of functional gastrointestinal diseases is limited by our ability to assess function and nowhere it that better illustrated than in the small bowel. Despite this being a vital organ its inaccessibility has markedly limited studies, of how we process complex meals. The stimulus for this review has been a burgeoning of new data derived from a range of novel patient acceptable ways of assessing function. The focus of this review will be on new methods especially MRI which have opened up the area, allowing the study of responses to complex mixed nutrient meals and in both healthy volunteers and patients. While barium contrast radiology gives excellent definition of anatomy it is a poor way of assessing function as the barium suspension used lacks normal nutrients
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