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Guarding is a characteristic finding in the physical examination for an abruptly painful abdomen (an acute abdomen) with inflammation of the inner abdominal (peritoneal) surface due, for example, to appendicitis or diverticulitis. The tensed muscles of the abdominal wall automatically go into spasm to keep the tender underlying tissues from ...
Tonic contractions are those contractions that are maintained from several minutes up to hours at a time. These occur in the sphincters of the tract, as well as in the anterior stomach. The other type of contractions, called phasic contractions, consist of brief periods of both relaxation and contraction, occurring in the posterior stomach and ...
Myoclonus is a brief, involuntary, irregular (lacking rhythm) twitching of a muscle, a joint, or a group of muscles, different from clonus, which is rhythmic or regular. Myoclonus ( myo- "muscle", clonus "spasm") describes a medical sign and, generally, is not a diagnosis of a disease .
In medicine, Carnett's sign is a finding on clinical examination in which abdominal pain remains unchanged or increases when the muscles of the abdominal wall are tensed. [1] [2] For this part of the abdominal examination, the patient can be asked to lift the head and shoulders from the examination table to tense the abdominal muscles.
Abdominal reflex; Accommodation reflex — coordinated changes in the vergence, lens shape and pupil size when looking at a distant object after a near object. Acoustic reflex or attenuation reflex — contraction of the stapedius and tensor tympani muscles in the middle ear in response to high sound intensities.
While this relaxation may be voluntary, the overall process of rumination is still generally involuntary. Relaxation due to intra-abdominal pressure is another proposed explanation, which would make abdominal compression the primary mechanism. The third is an adaptation of the belch reflex, which is the most commonly described mechanism.
The cells can be located in either the circular or longitudinal layer of the smooth muscle in the GI tract; circular for the small and large intestine, longitudinal for the stomach. [2] The frequency of contraction differs at each location in the GI tract beginning with 3 per minute in the stomach, then 12 per minute in the duodenum, 9 per ...
It can contract vigorously for a short time. Contraction of the external sphincter can defer defecation for a time by pushing stool from the anal canal back into the rectum. Once the voluntary signal to defecate is sent back from the brain, the abdominal muscles contract (straining) causing the intra-abdominal pressure to increase.