Congestive Colon Failure (CCF)

To understand colonic dysfunction it is important to understand how hollow viscous organs function and understand Laplace Law (Basford, 2002). Nowhere else have these principles being researched more than in the case of the heart. In other words, to understand constipation, one must understand congestive heart failure. It is well studied and researched that when the chambers of the heart dilate they become less efficient in pushing the blood out of the heart. This concept stems from Laplace Law, the principle of physics that states that pressure decreases as distention occurs in the heart chambers. The same is applicable to the colon, another hollow viscous organ. While colonic movement occurs once a day, and heart movement occurs a hundred thousand times a day, the physiological principles driving the movement do not change. Colonic movement is impacted in the same way as the heart when excessive dilation of the hollow viscous organ takes place. To move anything in the colon, a fixed amount of muscular pressure has to be generated to cause the stool to be pushed forward. As the stool starts collecting in the colon, the colon starts dilating which translates to the thinning of the bowel wall. This leads to a thinned out muscle which is unable to generate pressure to move the stool in the colon. Or in other words, relatively the pressure generated by the thinned out muscle is incapable of moving the total amount of stool present in the colon. Eventually the colonic muscle fails, as the maximum amount of pressure it can generate does not move the stool at all. This leads to colonic failure or as newly described in this book “Congestive Colon Failure (CCF)”