Enteropathies of Infancy

INTRODUCTION Acute diarrhea, in the industrialized world, is usually self-limited, infectious in nature, and rarely requires biopsy evaluation. Chronic diarrhea can cause failure to thrive, frequently results in intestinal biopsy and may require parenteral nutrition and other forms of therapy. Protracted diarrhea has replaced the older term “intractable diarrhea” in the GI literature and denotes a syndrome of severe diarrhea, usually occurring in infants less than a year of age and requiring aggressive nutritional and sometimes immunosuppressive management. Though not strictly synonymous with chronic diarrhea, the two are frequently used interchangeably. Several recent reviews on the subject of protracted diarrhea in childhood are available[1-4]. Disorders resulting in chronic diarrhea of childhood can be grouped into several major pathophysiologic categories: