First Author: Meghana Vellanki, University of South Florida College of Medicine, Class of 2015
The need of gastrostomy tubes is expected to rise with our growing elderly population with more than 200,000 gastrostomy tubes being placed every year. Gastrostomy tube placement, once a staple of surgeons and gastroenterologists, has propagated into other fields of medicine. Interventional Radiology (IR) have started to perform Percutaneous Radiologic Gastrostomy (PRG) placement. With the increased role of IR in gastrostomy tube placement,there have been previously undescribed novel complications associated with this technique that have not been explored in the literature.
In the following case series, we describe three case studies that portray one of these specific complications as a result of PRG tube placement by IR, called the "Buried Balloon". An analogous complication is the Buried Bumper syndrome (BBS) which has been extensively described in gastroenterology literature. Currently, there is a paucity of data in literature about the complications associated with PRG techniques specifically addressing this complication.