Invited Comment on G. Bassotti and E. Battaglia: Postoperative colonic motility after transverse loop colostomy: a further tassel in the mosaic

Excerpt

It is generally agreed that surgical procedures involving the gastrointestinal tract may, to a greater or lesser extent, influence or disrupt its motor activity by removing parts of the gut or creating anastomoses [1]. However, notwithstanding this almost universal belief, it is interesting and noteworthy that there are only a handful of studies in humans that investigated this aspect of intestinal function and evaluated the motility features in the postoperative colon [1]. This fact is even more surprising since manometric recordings for prolonged periods of time (24 h) both in healthy volunteers [2] and in patients with different pathological conditions [3, 4] have provided us with a relatively good knowledge of the motor behavior of the human colon. …