The Cesar Chavez Mini Film Festival, a two-day event in downtown Riverside, kicks off tonight (4/1) with a free 7 p.m. screening of âThe Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Struggleâ at the Culver Center, 3834 Main Street.
Ileus is a blockage of the intestines caused by a lack of peristalsis. Peristalsis is the pumping action of the intestines that helps move food through the digestive system. Ileus is used to describe both full and partial blockages. Solids (food), liquids, and gases are not able to move properly through the body when ileus occurs. Bowel movement can stop due to a mechanical blockage as well. Mechanical means there is something physically lodged in the intestine that is causing the blockage.
It also can result from certain drugs, spinal injuries, inflammation anywhere within the abdomen that touches the intestines, and diseases of the intestinal muscles themselves. Irrespective of the cause, ileus causes constipation, abdominal distention, and nausea and vomiting. On listening to the abdomen with a stethoscope, few or no bowel sounds are heard (because the bowel is inactive). Also called paralytic ileus. Also simply called ileus.