Small intestinal motor activity--its role in gut homeostasis and disease

The study of small intestinal motor activity has certainly emerged from relative obscurity to a position where it may indeed become an important clinical tool. Modern technology has led to a considerable increase in our understanding of the physiology of motor function and has brought us to a stage where small intestinal motility is amenable to study in man. It is clear that coordinated motor function of the small intestine is central to integrated digestive function. Normal patterns, and in particular normal variants, are still being defined, and both the investigator and the clinician need to be particularly aware of interspecies, intersubject and interregional variations. While in some instances, abnormal motility is clearly related to an underlying disorder of intestinal neuromuscular function, in others, and in particular in functional gastrointestinal disorders, the overall experience of intestinal motility recordings in man is still too limited to allow us to declare with confidence whether reported abnormalities are, indeed, truly aberrant patterns or whether they are causally related to a given patient's symptoms.