Gastric emptying

Gastric emptying is the movement of stomach contents through the pylorus into the duodenum. Its rate depends on meal properties and coordinated muscular and hormonal control.

Antral peristalsis: Wave-like contractions of the stomach’s lower region that propel and grind its contents. Antral contractions drive solids toward the pylorus and reduce them to particles small enough to pass.
Chyme: The semifluid mixture of partially digested food and gastric secretions leaving the stomach. Gastric emptying delivers chyme, rather than intact meals, into the duodenum.
Gastric emptying scintigraphy: A nuclear medicine test that tracks a radiolabeled meal as it leaves the stomach. It is a standard method for measuring solid-meal emptying in suspected gastroparesis.
Postprandial glucose: The concentration of glucose in blood after eating. Slower delivery of carbohydrate to the intestine can delay the rise in blood glucose.
Functional dyspepsia: A chronic disorder marked by bothersome upper-abdominal symptoms without an explanatory structural disease. Symptoms can resemble delayed emptying even when measured emptying is normal.
Pyloric sphincter: A ring of smooth muscle at the stomach outlet that regulates passage into the duodenum. Its changing resistance meters chyme leaving the stomach.
Gastric sieving: The stomach’s retention of large solid particles while smaller particles and liquids pass through the pylorus. Particle size determines which parts of a solid meal can pass the outlet.
Gastroparesis: Delayed gastric emptying without mechanical obstruction, often accompanied by nausea, fullness, or vomiting. The diagnosis depends on documenting delayed emptying and excluding an outlet blockage.
Oral drug absorption: The uptake of medicines taken by mouth from the gastrointestinal tract into the bloodstream. For many drugs, stomach emptying influences when the medicine reaches its main absorption site.
Wireless motility capsule: An ingestible device that records gastrointestinal pH, pressure, and temperature to estimate transit. Its gastric transit measurement differs from scintigraphy because the capsule is not a meal.

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