A short time ago, it was believed that all of the organic alterations in the mesenteric ischemia were due to the total or partial obstruction of the intestinal arterial flow. As for the physiopathology of the ischemia process and mesenteric reperfusion, recent discoveries demonstrated that the free radicals, mainly, act during the reperfusion taking to the lesion much more important tecidual than the lesions that happen in the ischemia phase separately. So a new therapeutic possibility appears besides the surgical treatment when a certain substance could act in the way to inhibit or to minimize the cascade of alterations at the cellular level that culminate to the cellular lesion and death. We accomplished a wide revision of the current medical literature for the databases LILACS and MEDLINE looking to verify the studied drugs for this gol and the results obtained in the researches. We verified that countless substances have been appraised in experimental studies and most of them didn't show satisfactory results for their acceptance in practice clinic. Although some presented promising results, new studies are still needed to discover a substance that can be used in ischemia situations and mesenteric reperfusion in human beings to avoid interventionist treatments with high mortality rate.
Ischemia; reperfusion; experimental surgery