INTESTINAL STRANGULATIONS BY ADVENTITIOUS BANDS.
Result of circumscribed peritonitis. Extends from one part of abdominal wall to another, around or between intestines, on omentum, or adhesion of omentum to inguinal ring. In cattle tubercular products strangulate bowels. Symptoms: the colic of obstruction, rectal exploration. Treatment: laparotomy, removal of constricting band.
Adventitious fibrous bands in the abdomen are the result of a pre-existing peritonitis of a circumscribed area. The fibrinous exudate thrown out on the parietal peritoneum is detached in its median part but remains adherent at the ends, and when organized into tense resistant white fibrous tissue remains as a trap to entangle and strangulate the intestinal folds. In other cases they form on or between intestines or other viscera which are for the moment torpid and inactive, and contracting as they become organized, they bind these together and hamper their movements, and endanger the integrity of all movable viscera in the vicinity. Again they form on the omentum and threaten the integrity of the bowels by strangulation. The omentum protruding at castration becomes adherent to the inguinal ring and forms a dangerous band.
In cattle the growth of peritoneal tubercle often binds the small intestines together in an inextricable tangle leading to considerable compression, and obstruction without a complete stenosis.
Symptoms. These vary with the organ constricted, but they are usually those of a more or less perfect obstruction of some portion of the intestine small or large, which has passed over or under the constricting band and fails to return, often undergoing a torsion which renders its imprisonment still more secure. The author has found the double colon fatally constricted in this way, and Leblanc furnishes a similar case. Cases are on record of the binding of the duodenum to the right lobe of the liver by a strong fibrous band, of the binding of the double colon to the right flank and in another case to the floor of the abdomen, and of the ileum to the meso-rectum and in another case to the left flank. These give rise sooner or later to obstruction of these viscera or, to incarceration of adjacent ones so that the animal dies of intestinal obstruction with its attendant symptoms.
Treatment. If the true nature of the case can be made out by rectal exploration the appropriate treatment is by laparotomy and the removal of the constricting band.