Gastrobronchial Fistula Following a Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy
Unusual clinical course, Diagnostic / therapeutic accidents, Management of emergency care
Christian Saliba, Gregory Nicolas, Samer Diab, Ihab Joudi, Claude Tayar
Department of Surgery, Clemenceau Medical Center, Beirut, Lebanon
Am J Case Rep 2019; 20:31-35
DOI: 10.12659/AJCR.910596
Available online:
Published: 2019-01-08

BACKGROUND:
Bariatric operations have been gaining more ground over the past decade. The most commonly used bariatric operation is the laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy. A complication of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy is gastric leak; which can rarely cause a primary subphrenic abscess and a secondary diaphragm rupture that will lead eventually to a gastrobronchial fistula.
CASE REPORT:
We present the case of a 32-year-old patient who started having symptoms suggestive of gastrobronchial fistula at 2 months following laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy.
CONCLUSIONS:
The treatment of a gastrobronchial fistula is controversial as this complication is rarely covered in published studies. Our expert opinion for this patient case was to opt for a surgical approach seeing that the complexity and severity of the fistula had a low chance of subsiding after only conservative measures.
Keywords: Bariatric Surgery, Digestive System Fistula, general surgery