ELECTROSIGMOIDOGRAM, ELECTRORECTOGRAM AND THEIR RELATION

Ahmed Shafik

Professor and Chairman, Department of Surgery and Experimental Research, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

Received 6/20/97 Accepted 7/31/97

2. INTRODUCTION

Motility of colon moves the colonic contents to the rectum. Colon possesses 3 motor activities; segmentation, massive peristalsis and antiperistaltic movements (1-3). Slow waves or pacesetter potentials (PPs) and bursts of action potentials (APs) have been recorded from different parts of the gut (4-18). Ingestion of food elicits electric activity of the colon under normal physiologic conditions (19,20). Patients with slow-transit constipation showed no colonic myoelectric response to food ingestion (12,21,22).

The sigmoid colon stores stools and delivers them to the rectum. Although the myoelectric activities of the sigmoid colon and rectum have been separately studied (7,8,14-18), the relation of the electric activity of sigmoid colon to the rectum has not been studied thus far. In this communication, the myoelectric activity of the sigmoid colon and rectum were studied under resting conditions and under a condition that simulated defecation.