ABSTRACT
Radiation enteritis is an insidious progressive disease that is seen with increasing frequency with the utilization of supervoltage therapy. Tissue damage and functional integrity follow a bimodel curve and usually return to normal within 2 weeks after cessation of therapy. The pathological findings of radiation enteritis are characteristic grossly as well as in both light and electron microscopy. They also may be differentiated into early acute effects and delayed chronic, insidious effects. The gross pathology of radiation enteritis varies with interval after exposure, showing edema and fibrinous peritonitis, early on, and hyalinized fibrosis, later. The use of an elemental or defined formula diet was first considered experimentally for the "intestinal lesion" by Bounous et al. in the 1960s with their excellent model of hemorrhagic shock and intestinal ischemia in the dog. The lesion of hemorrhagic intestinal ischemia certainly can be transferred to the radiation injury model.
