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Case Reports
. 2021 Mar 11;13(3):e13829.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.13829.

Adult Female With Abdominal Distention

Sarah E Frasure  1 , Joel J Lange  1 , Marya AlSamman  1 , Ali Pourmand  1
Affiliations
Case Reports

Adult Female With Abdominal Distention

Sarah E Frasure et al. Cureus. .

Abstract

Gastric outlet obstruction (GOO) is a rare diagnosis that can be challenging to make as its symptoms, which include abdominal distention, nausea, and persistent vomiting, often overlap with many other acute abdominal pathologies. Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) can help the clinician identify gastric outlet obstruction in patients who present to the emergency department (ED). Sonographic identifiers include a markedly dilated stomach that is filled with both hyper- and hypoechoic contents and may extend into the lower abdomen in the pelvic views.

Keywords: abdominal ultrasound; gastric distention; gastric outlet obstruction.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The bowel gas pattern appears normal. No free intra-peritoneal air is present.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Enlarged stomach (see arrows) with stomach contents in left upper quadrant and left lower quadrant of the abdomen.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Sagittal and coronal CT imaging demonstrates gastric outlet obstruction with dilatation of the stomach and distal esophagus (see arrows).
Figure 4
Figure 4. Nasogastric tube output in the ED
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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