[Experimental autograft of the small intestine in the pig. Histological, histoenzymological and ultrastructural study].

In order to form an opinion of the value of certain precocious rejection tests with a view to ulterior intestinal allograftings, the authors intend first of all to determine the consequences of the operation itself and of the possibility resulting anoxia on the function of the intestinal mucosa. A concomitant biological (xylose test meal, quantitative analysis of the enzymes of the mucosa) and morphological study (lipid test meal, histologic, enzymologic and ultrastructural study of biopsic specimens) was carried out at various intervals after orthotopical intestinal autografting in 22 pigs. Most of the biological tests were strongly perturbated on the 7th day and some of them did not resume their initial value until the 15th day. The morphological and especially ultrastructural studies showed up to that time an important inflammation apparently caused not by the anoxia but by the lymph stasis. Solely conventional histology was only sightly modified (absence of ulcerations and of denudation of the villi) and this relative integrity, contrasting with the known severity of the lesions in case of precocious rejection, allows to consider this examination the only valuable until the 15th day, for the detection of immunologic incompatility reactions in allograftings.