Functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract in children of different age groups (a literature review)

Abstract

In recent years, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract are becoming more common with economic and social impacts. It is believed that in terms of frequency, they rank second both among the adult and pediatric population, second only to respiratory system diseases. Due to significant morphological and physiological changes in individual organs and systems during the period of intensive development of a child, the formation of gastroenterological pathology occurs most often at the age of 5–6 or 9–12 years, that gives rise to various functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract.

There is an opinion that among older children, such functional disorders are often bordering on pathology, prompting pediatricians to an increased interest in their etiology, pathogenesis and current therapy.

Aim. To highlight the state of the problem associated with the most frequent functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract in children at the present stage.

According to the recent recommendations, it has been recommended to consider functional changes as disorders of the interaction between the brain and the gastrointestinal tract (disorders of gut-brain interaction).The underlying disorders are abnormal motility, visceral hypersensitivity, the state of the gastrointestinal mucosa and local immune factors, intestinal microflora, activity of the central and autonomic nervous system. Most researchers tend to think about the key role of impaired autonomic regulation of sphincter activity in the pathogenesis of motor-evacuatory dysfunction of the alimentary canal in children, buoyed by the fact that often the lack of gastrointestinal organic lesions in motility disorders indicates their dysregulatory character.

Conclusions. Functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract have an extraordinary brightness of pain syndrome perception (no organic pathology would give such a wide array of symptoms as functional disorders) and a variable pattern of symptoms, so it becomes clear why these diseases impose a major economic burden, and it is this characteristic enables them to be classified as socially significant disorders. This requires a physician at various levels of medical care to provide timely diagnosis, differential diagnosis between organic gastrointestinal diseases, and timely correction of functional disorders.