About Short Bowel Syndrome

What is Instestinal Failure?

Intestinal failure is a condition characterized by the reduced capacity of the intestines to absorb enough water, nutrients, and/or electrolytes to maintain proper health or growth.

What is Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS)?

Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS) is a disorder characterized by a host of conditions including:

• Diarrhea
• Malabsorption
• Fluid and Electrolyte Imbalances
• In children, the resection (surgical removal) or functional loss of small intestine leaving less than 30% of the normal length for age, and in adults, leaving less than 200 cm or 6.5 feet.

What Causes Intestinal Loss?

Causes may range from a loss due to congenital anomalies, loss from necrotizing enterocolitis, resections due to strangulation of the intestine (volvulus) or from extensive resections caused by inflammatory bowel disease.

Patients may also have a normal intestinal length; however, suffer from intestinal dysmotility, injury from radiation exposure (radiation enteritis) or malabsorptive processes which prevent adequate amounts of nutrition from being absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract.

A variety of other motility disorders exist including drug induced visceral myopathy primarily due to the prolonged ingestion of laxatives. Infectious disorders can also effect the myenteric plexus and cause motility problems. Malabsorptive conditions may be congenital (the child is born with the condition), or acquired.