It is thought that heart attacks only concern the heart… Error… Heart attack means in medicine that a part of the body begins to suffer because the artery which feeds it is clogged. Certainly the heart, but also the brain – this is stroke – and less known but just as serious, the stomach: this is mesenteric infarction.
The mesentery is the covering of the small intestine. The organs at risk of infarction are those whose different territories are fed by a single artery. This is the case of the heart, half a brain but also of the kidney, and to a lesser extent, of the lungs. In the case of mesenteric infarction, it is the vessels that irrigate the intestine and allow digestion to take place in the best conditions that become clogged.
In the notion of infarction, there is also that of brutal event. In the mesenteric infarction, most often, in fact, it is also violent, with very strong pains in the stomach, vomiting or significant diarrhea. To be clear, it is difficult to miss this emergency, because the person is often in a state of shock: very pale, sweating, in a state of discomfort that worries them… You have to call the emergency services, because it is a great emergency and the intestine must be saved before it begins to become necrotic. We unfortunately still too often die of this type of heart attack.
Little is known about this infarction because, fortunately, it is not as common as myocardial infarction. It is quite rare, but on the other hand, often more serious.
A simple treatment
It is the surgeon who solves the problem by cutting the parts damaged by the lack of blood and connects the healthy extremities. But it’s extremely urgent: we only have a few hours.
The causes of this disease are the same as for most heart attacks. Blockage of the artery, secondary to heart disease, excessively viscous blood or cholesterol plaques. It is often the three causes that overlap; which explains why, in the case of bowel infarction, this disease occurs more often from the age of 70.
Food, in question?
We can imagine that the richer the diet, the greater the demand for blood in the intestine… And the more those who tend to clog or narrow these arteries will have difficulty during a large meal that takes a long time to digest. That’s a bit of a quick shortcut, but probably not far from the truth.
The proof: since the advent of dietetics, this disease is decreasing. This is why we must continue this trend.
Doctor Jean-Francois Lemoine
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