What Causes Abdominal Pain?
April 28, 2008 by rainier
Abdominal pain is caused by inflammation (e.g., appendicitis, diverticulitis, colitis ), by stretching or distention of an organ (e.g., obstruction of the intestine, blockage of a bile duct by gallstones, swelling of the liver with hepatitis), or by loss of the supply of blood to an organ (e.g., ischemic colitis). To complicate matters, however, abdominal pain also can occur without inflammation, distention or loss of blood supply. An important example of this latter type of pain is the irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It is not clear what causes the abdominal pain in IBS, but it is believed to be due either to abnormal contractions of the intestinal muscles (e.g., spasm) or abnormally sensitive nerves within the intestines that give rise to painful sensations inappropriately (visceral hyper-sensitivity).
Comments
6 Responses to “What Causes Abdominal Pain?”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] and symptoms The signs and symptoms of nonulcer stomach pain may include: * A burning sensation or discomfort in your upper abdomen or lower chest, sometimes [...]
[...] What is abdominal pain? [...]
[...] do occur they include severe pain of a colic type, particularly on the upper right-hand side of the abdomen. The pain may also be felt in the upper part of the back. There may be nausea, vomiting and [...]
[...] There may also be nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite and fever. Eventually, there is abdominal swelling and tenderness. A person with symptoms of appendicitis should seek immediate medical [...]
[...] are usually no symptoms of diverticulosis. However, there may be pain in the left side of the lower abdomen and disturbed bowel habit, caused by muscle spasms in the colon. The symptoms of diverticulitis are [...]
[...] peritoneal dialysis, the abdominal cavity, with the dialysis fluid sitting inside it, is used in place of the tube. In continuous [...]