How common is evacuating bowels during death?

[Really Not All That Bright]

Originally Posted by doorhinge

The statement, "If one props open the sphincter, there's a constant flow of feces until the subject dies of malnutrition" is correct.

Shoving solid objects up your egress would still allow the sphincter to seal the opening. Inserting a hollow tube and leaving it there for a week will result in death.

The anal sphincter isn't there to ensure the bowels draw enough nutrients. It's to keep you from constantly shitting yourself. Peristalsis ensures that food progresses slowly enough through the bowels; very little is being drawn from it by the end of the large intestine; in fact, the stuff being absorbed is mostly water at that point.

[toodlepip]

Originally Posted by doorhinge

Did you mean "dripping off the post-erior"?

Proping open the sphincter long enough for someone to die of malnutrition would take days. Maybe you should take a closer look at diarrea, the condition. Since the body absorbs most of it's nutrition from the intestines, the inability to retain that nutrition for any length of time would eventually result in death. The subject would die from lack of nurishment (aka malnutrition) and or dehydration without medical intervention.

The statement, "If one props open the sphincter, there's a constant flow of feces until the subject dies of malnutrition" is correct.

Shoving solid objects up your egress would still allow the sphincter to seal the opening. Inserting a hollow tube and leaving it there for a week will result in death.

As a vet, I am more familiar with diarrhoea than I would have liked. Diarrhoea and faecal incontinence may occur together, but they are two very different issues.

Most nutrients are absorbed in the small intestine, the large intestine mostly absorbs water. It is true that severe diarrhoea leads to dehydration and electrolyte disturbances, which can be fatal if untreated. Nutritional malabsorption is also an issue. It is, however, entirely possible to have diarrhoea for a very long time without dying from malnutrition. That aside, an open anal sphincter does not increase the amount of faeces passed, or even the frequency of defecation.

I have managed faecally incontinent patients for years. Some are spinal cases, some have had rectal surgery due to tumours and have had the rectal sphincter damaged or completely removed. They pass faeces involuntarily, not at convenient times, but it does not flow continuously even if they have severe diarrhoea. It is not easy to live with, and it is something few dog owners would choose to put themselves through, but it is not a life-threatening situation for the dog and some of them seem to have a pretty decent quality of life.

I have treated dozens, if not hundreds, of lambs that are born with no rectal opening. The treatment consists of cutting a hole and letting the edges heal. They are faecally incontinent for as long as they live, which is usually about six months before they go for slaughter. They pass normal faeces. If the hole isn't made big enough, they will get constipated - the artificial opening is much less elastic than an anal sphincter.

As for inserting a hollow tube - I have done it. It's one way of treating an irreducible rectal prolapse in young pigs and cattle. (Insert tube through the prolapse, tie off the prolapse with a tight nylon band, cutting off the blood supply. Wait two to three weeks for the prolapsed portion to die off, the hollow tube allows faeces to pass through. Eventually, the dead prolapsed tissue falls off along with the tube, and you're left with a shiny new hole. It's pretty amazing.) The procedure doesn't always work, but when it fails, it is due to constipation rather than diarrhoea.

Your scenario of "insert tube, watch patient die from malnutrition" would work if the tube extended far enough up - the length of the entire large intestine and most of the small intestine, that's one hell of a tube. If you bypass most of the digestive tract, nutrients cannot be absorbed. Death would follow. But it would be from dehydration. It takes a while to starve to death.

[KarlGrenze]

Seconding the "spinchter tone is not related to diarrhea, nor decreased sphincter tone would result in diarrhea", "even with decreased sphincter tone, feces produced are not the same as diarrhea", and "it takes a while to die from starvation" (the last one, sadly, I have to deal with on a semi-regular basis).

[doorhinge]

Originally Posted by toodlepip

As a vet, I am more familiar with diarrhoea than I would have liked. Diarrhoea and faecal incontinence may occur together, but they are two very different issues.

Most nutrients are absorbed in the small intestine, the large intestine mostly absorbs water. It is true that severe diarrhoea leads to dehydration and electrolyte disturbances, which can be fatal if untreated. Nutritional malabsorption is also an issue. It is, however, entirely possible to have diarrhoea for a very long time without dying from malnutrition. That aside, an open anal sphincter does not increase the amount of faeces passed, or even the frequency of defecation.

Thanks for the info.

[congodwarf]

I have been a receptionist in a Vet's office for 2 weeks now and the doc has had to euthanize 6 animals in that time (dogs and cats). She will not euthanize animals that aren't sick or that can be treated (unless it's required by animal control) so all of them were sick and at the ends of their lives. Only one of the 6 pooped. I asked her if it was common (at that point, it was only the second since I started) and she said that it wasn't common but that maybe 1 in 10 would do it and it was much more likely if they were already suffering from digestive issues.

[WhyNot]

As I mentioned upthread, an ostomy (colostomy or ileostomy) bypasses all of the anal sphincters entirely. People live without anal sphincters controlling their stool output for decades.

[Cub Mistress]

I've bathed a few freshly dead people. Most of them were in the hospital basically on death watch. Maybe one in 10 had has some fecal incontinence, usually only a tiny amount. As was said upthread, dying patients are rarely eating heartily plus they are usually on pain meds, so their bowels are usually more bound up than loose.

Some people with colostomies still have a section of bowel attached to the rectum, that produces and expels mucus.

Human bodies are complex.

[gallows fodder]

Originally Posted by outlierrn

In my experience in the ER previously healthy people that die suddenly are rarely incontinent to stool or urine.

I've never heard a death rattle either.

I was present at my mother's death from cancer, and she had a death rattle. I thought at first it was the sound of condensation forming in her breathing tube, but when I took the tube out of her nose to clear it, I saw that there was no water in the tube and realized that the sound was coming from her mouth (her breath). It sounded...just like water crackling in a tube, or a little like carbonation popping. She died just minutes later.

She didn't void her bowels when she died, either. Probably because she hadn't eaten in a few days. Her hospice nurse had tried to give her an enema the day before and was surprised to find that there was nothing there.

[TriPolar]

I don't know how common it is, but I plan to do it when I die.

[Rigamarole]

Originally Posted by TriPolar

I don't know how common it is, but I plan to do it when I die.

Now I understand why some inmates on death row order really ridiculously big last meals! Kind of a final "fuck you" to the world.

[Thalion]

I've been a cop for 25 years, and I've seen a LOT of dead bodies. Mostly natural deaths, plenty of suicides and traffic accidents, and a couple of homicides. I've seen evacuation of the bowels only on a few cases.

I would guess that you must be just ready to head to the bathroom when the Reaper taps you on the shoulder for it to happen.

[KarlGrenze]

Originally Posted by Rigamarole

Now I understand why some inmates on death row order really ridiculously big last meals! Kind of a final "fuck you" to the world.

Depends, if the time frame between dinner and killing is not too long, the "fuck you" would be to the poor ones who do the autopsy.

[Really Not All That Bright]

Autopsy? As in, "let's examine the corpse of the prisoner we just put 2,500 volts through, and see if we can figure out why he died!"?