We report a patient who had refractory Hodgkin's disease and who received an autologous bone marrow transplantation and 8 months later developed abdominal pain associated with acute colonic dilation. The course of the patient was rapidly fatal due to a lobar pneumonia. Autopsy revealed signs of disseminated herpesvirus infection with marked hemorrhagic infarction of celiac sympathetic ganglia. This finding supports the hypothesis that denervation caused by virus reactivation and secondary hemorrhage is a main mechanism of acute colonic pseudoobstruction.
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Nomdedéu et al. (1995) studied this question.