Digestion and absorption in a man with all but three feet of the small intestine removed surgically

Neuromuscular disease in patients with steatorrhoea.

“…Reports of 12 patients with documented steatorrhoea followed for at least one year and up to seven years after resection failed to reveal any neuropathy; tetany, however, was not uncommon (Anderson, 1965;Opie, Hunt, and Finlay, 1964;Booth, MacIntyre, and Mollin, 1964;Clayton and Cotton, 1961;Todd, Dittebrandt, Montague, and West, 1940;Berman, Ulevitch, Haft, and Lemish, 1950;Bothe, Magee, and Driscoll, 1954;Trafford, 1956;Linder, Jackson, and Linder, 1953). Eight other patients with massive resections showed no neurological abnormalities (Althausen, Doig, Uyeyama, and Weiden, 1950;Berman, Habegger, and Billings, 1953;Fletcher, Henley, Sammons, and Squire, 1960;Holman, 1944;Martin, Robertson, and Dennis, 1948;Mayer and Criep, 1949;Pincus, 1951).…”

The history of metabolic surgery for morbid obesity and a commentary

“…An excellent review, along with a report on original dog investigations of the effect of the massive loss of small intestine, was published by Flint in 1912 [1J. Todd and associates [2] reported a case of tetany, with a serum calcium of 6.5, in a patient with a residual of only 3 feet of small intestine. Two cases of massive small bowel resection (approximately 88%), with the patients dying of inanition 9 months after oPeration, were reported in 1949 by Weckesser and associates [3]: A more positive note was sounded by Cattell with a case report of a 70-year-old patient wth 3Y2 feet of remaining jejunum who recovered but never regained her weight [4J.…”