The first step towards anticipating the impact of a stoma is to know what a stoma is and how it functions. A stoma is an opening in the belly to allows a diversion in the digestive or urinary tract to move wastes out of the body.
The purpose of creating a stoma is to eliminate the root cause of problems in the digestive or urinary tract. The surgeon constructs this artificial opening using the end of the intestine. The stoma you see is the end of the intestine sticking out on the belly.
The appearance of the stoma
After surgery, the stoma will be swollen, but it shrinks over time. It will settle down to a permanent shape and size in 6 weeks, which is the exact duration required for the postoperative recovery to complete.
Because a stoma doesn’t have any nerve endings, it won’t feel anything. It, however, has a lot of tiny blood vessels that might result in bleeding when you rub the stoma.
Generally, a stoma is pink or red and moist. Its overall appearance is much like the inside of the mouth.
What are the types of stoma?
There are three types of stomas, with each one differentiable based on the location or type of the excretory tract where it exists. These three types include colostomy, ileostomy, and urostomy.
Colostomy
A colostomy operation refers to a procedure in which the surgeon brings a part of the colon out through a small incision in the belly to create a stoma. Although the stoma of a colostomy is usually on the left side of the abdomen, it can be at a different location depending on where on the colon you need it. With no sphincter muscles in the stoma, you will not be able to control when to expel your body wastes.
There are two types of colostomies: end colostomy and loop colostomy.
- An end colostomy is when your surgeon wants to remove a part of the colon or rectum. After removing the diseased segment of the bowel, he will bring the end of the healthy bowel out through the belly. The end colostomy can be permanent or temporary, depending on why you had to undergo the surgical procedure.
- In some conditions, the surgeon may want to pull a loop of the colon out through the belly. He will then make a small incision on the top of the loop to create a stoma. This incision opens two ends, one of which expels waste materials from the active part of the bowel, and the other one leads to the diseased segment of the colon along with the rectum and anus. The surgeon will create this stoma to give the diseased section of the bowel some time to heal.
Ileostomy
In some cases, your surgeon may want to remove or rest the entire colon. The resultant stoma that you get will bring out the end of the small intestine, and it will be called an ileostomy. With the whole colon removed, the ileostomy will have to evacuate waste materials in a more liquid form. The waste content will also contain digestive enzymes in abundance. These enzymes can be highly corrosive to the skin around the stoma. An ileostomy, too, can be of two types: an end ileostomy and a loop ileostomy.
Urostomy
The stoma that bypasses your urinary bladder is known as a urostomy. The surgeon may want to create it if you need your bladder to be removed due to any underlying condition. The surgeon will then take a piece of the small intestine, which will serve as a conduit to transport urine from the ureters to the opening in the belly. He will attach ureters to one end of the conduit and pull the other end through a cut in the abdominal wall to create a stoma.
