Gastric drainage procedures: effects in normal dogs. III. Postmortem evaluation.

Postmortem macroscopic examination of the gastrointestinal tract and plastic moldings of the gastrointestinal communication were done in 29 dogs which had been subjected 3 to 4 weeks previously to one of the following gastric drainage procedure: (1) Fredet-Ramstedt pyloromyotomy (FRP) (6 dogs); (2) Heineke-Mikulicz pyloroplasty (HMP) (6 dogs); (3) Finney pyloroplasty (FP) (6 dogs); (4) Jaboulay's gastroduodenostomy (JG) (6 dogs); and (5) antral gastrojejunostomy (AG) (5 dogs). Plastic moldings were also done in nine normal dogs of similar size for comparative measurements. Postmortem examinations and plastic casts of the antropyloroduodenal segment and antrojejunal communication showed significantly widened pyloric canal or large gastrointestinal communication compared to control dogs in all groups except for the FRP group. Almost complete healing had occurred at the myotomy site in FRP dogs, and the pyloric lumen was not significantly larger (less than 0.05) than the pyloric lumen of the control dogs. The lumen of the gastrointestinal junction was increased approximately 4.5 times in the HMP group, 12.0 times in the FP group, 7.2 times in the JG group, and 10.0 times in the AG group.