[The radiolesions of the small bowel (author's transl)]

The irradiation of the pelvic abdominal cancers extends beyond the centre of the tumour and may induce actinic digestive lesions. The bowel and more rarely the small bowel--which is the subject-matter of our study--are concerned by those radiolesions that are favoured by therapeutic overdose, post-operative adhesions fastening the bows, radio-surgical or chemicostatic associations, and lastly by vascular or nutritive deficiencies. One may distinguish between two kinds of lesions, depending on the lapse of time before their coming out and on the symptoms. The early or acute types are characterized by a radio-mucitis and give an exsudative enteropathy with anorexia, vomiting, diarrhoea and loss of weight, of which the diagnosis is easy because it occurs during the irradiation and lessens at the end of the treatment. The late radiolesions of the small bowel are characterized by sclerosis and chronic endarteritis and, after a longlasting period of latency, give varied symptoms: disordered intestinal transit which sometimes is irreversible, perforation, fistula, syndrome of malabsorption, giving often rise to be mistaken for a recurrence of the cancer. The treatment varies whether the lesion is segmental or diffuse. In the first case, the failure of the medical means accounts for the surgical cutting away or the internal derivation; in the second case, the digestive mutilation which would result from an enlargement of the lesion commands to be more cautions and to call for the methods of parenteral feeding and digestive setting to rest.