Violeta Ožeraitienė

Vilnius University Hospital, Vilnius University Medical Faculty, Center of Propaedeutics and Nursing Studies

Key words: tobacco smoking, small intestine, absorption function, disorders of evacomotor function, gastroduodenal zone.

Summary. The aim of this work is to research the effects of short-term tobacco smoking (TS) on the absorption function of the small intestine (SI), when having impaired evacomotor function (IMEF) in gastroduodenal zone (GD). The absorption function of SI was studied in 152 volunteers, 94 of them had gastroesophageal and duodenogastric refluxes in GD. D-xylose test was performed on all volunteers. It was concluded that IMEF in GD has significant influence on the absorption function of SI only among non-smokers. Afterwards the test was performed together with two different TS loads. It was established that TS loads deteriorated normal or already worse the absorption function in SI for all volunteers. It turned out that these who don’t have IMEF, TS of one cigarette load deteriorated absorption in SI, especially in its proximal segment. Those who had IMEF, TS of one cigarette load have deteriorated in both proximal and distal segment of SI. For heavy smokers, a bigger (TS of 2 cigarettes) load despite IMEF in GD zone, has significantly deteriorated absorption function in the distal segment of SI. Short-term smoking effects exert greater influence, when volunteers have smaller body mass and longer smoking duration (in years).