Gastrointestinal phytobezoars: presentation and management

Abstract

A chart review from 1975 to 1985 at the Toronto Western Hospital identified 16 patients (9 women and 7 men, between the ages of 39 and 83 years) with gastrointestinal phytobezoars. Nine had previously undergone vagotomy and drainage procedures. There were two distinct clinical groups, dependent on the location gastric bezoars presented with chronic burning epigastric pain and nausea and vomiting in addition to anorexia and weight loss. Six of seven patients with small-bowel bezoars had acute small-bowel obstruction, manifested by crampy abdominal pain, vomiting and obstipation. In the seventh patient the bezoar was found incidentally in an efferent loop during endoscopy. Gastric bezoars were all diagnosed by endoscopy; patients with small-bowel bezoars had x-ray films compatible with small-bowel obstruction. The obstructing small-bowel bezoars were found at midileum and proximal jejunum. Five patients underwent proximal enterotomy with bezoar removal; in one the bezoar was milked distally into the cecum. One patient also had multiple nonobstructing small-bowel bezoars removed through the single enterotomy and another had a separate gastrotomy for removal of a gastric bezoar. The postoperative courses were uncomplicated except for wound infection in one patient. None of the patients with an isolated gastric bezoar required surgery. Three patients were successfully treated with gastric lavage and the others with clear fluid diet.