Successful management of an acquired gastric outlet obstruction with endoscopy guided balloon dilatation

Antral-pyloric strictures and gastric outlet obstruction are known complications of caustic ingestions. These lesions can develop even in the absence of overt signs of potentially serious upper gastrointestinal tract pathology such as oropharyngeal burns, dysphagia, vomiting, or abdominal pain at the time of ingestion. The development of radial balloon catheters, which can be endoscopically guided into narrow strictures and inflated, offers an alternative therapy to surgical resection of obstructing lesions. We report the successful management of a pyloric stricture secondary to a caustic ingestion by sequential endoscopically guided balloon dilatations and offer guidelines for the use of this procedure.