Electrical activity of the stomach: clinical implications

Disorders of gastrointestinal motility are increasingly being recognized with the aid of such innovative techniques as gastrointestinal manometry and radioscintigraphy. Applications of these techniques have expanded and refined our present understanding of the gut motility both in health and in disease. Recent studies have shown that disturbances of motility can be limited to a specific segment of the gut such as the stomach or can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract. Because gastrointestinal motility is controlled by electrical activity, increasing efforts are being made to characterize and quantify the underlying electrical disturbances in various disorders of gastrointestinal motility. In this article, we review the electrical basis of gastric motility and the clinical implications of gastric dysrhythmia.