Abstract
Patients with spinal cord injury frequently complicate serious gastrointestinal diseases such as perforation of a duodenal ulcer. On the other hand, there have been very few reports about radiological and endoscopic examinations of these patients. Therefore, we evaluated endoscopic appearance of gastric mucosa and gastric acid secretion of these patients with spinal cord injury, who were thought to be vagotonic. Ten patients with chronic cervical spinal cord injury were investigated on the severity of the disease, serum gastrin level, gastric acid excretion including endoscopic Congo red Study, and biopsy of gastric mucosa. The conclusion are as follows: 1) In these patients, endoscopy was more tolerable than radiological examination. 2) Gastric atrophic border of these patients located more distal than that of normal persons. 3) Mean basal acid output level of these patients was higher than that of normal persons. 4) It was thought that the ability of gastric acid secretion in these patients resembled that of patients with duodenal ulcer.
