Morphological changes in ganglia of the celiac plexus following major abdominal operations

Abstract

Experiments on 163 dogs were made to study the time course of histological and ultrastructural changes in celiac plexus nodes after resection of the two-thirds of the stomach as well as after some other large operations on the abdominal organs (economic gastric resection, cholecystectomy, resection of the small intestine). It has been demonstrated that since the first days after operation the gangliocytes and neuroglial cells of celiac plexus nodes manifested histological changes detectable at light and electron microscopy levels. These changes were largely reversible in nature despite destructive processes eventuating in the death of some gangliocytes, pericapsular gliocytes and neurolemmocytes. The most overt changes were observed towards the first week after operation, the number of neurons with reversible changes amounting to 42% and that having the signs of destruction to 9.9%. At the later stages the intensity of the histological changes was noticeably reduced. Analogous data were obtained during studies of the time course of the histological changes after other above-indicated operations. However, the intensity of the changes was substantially less than that seen after resection of the two-thirds of the stomach. The evidence obtained allows the conclusion that the pathological structural changes that develop in the celiac plexus after resection of the two-thirds of the stomach play one of the leading parts in the pathogenesis of the post-gastroresection syndrome.