Medical Image of the Week: Dobhoff Tube Placement with Roux-En-Y Gastric Bypass
Wednesday, April 18, 2018 at 8:00AM 
Figure 1. Abdominal X-ray after Dobhoff tube (DHT) placement to confirm accurate positioning. The distal tip of the feeding tube is in a loop of jejunum in patient status post gastrojejunostomy.
Figure 2. Gastrointestinal anatomy before and after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure.
Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is one of the most commonly performed bariatric operations in the United States. It involves partitioning a small gastric pouch off the proximal stomach and attaching that pouch directly to the intestine, thereby bypassing the large remainder of the stomach (1,2). Placing a Dobhoff tube (DHT) and confirming its placement can be challenging due to the change in anatomy after the procedure. Here, we have a 65-year-old woman who presented to the hospital with acute encephalopathy and acute hypoxic respiratory failure due to multifocal pneumonia requiring intubation and prolonged ICU stay. A DHT was inserted after intubation for feeding purposes. An abdominal X-ray was obtained to confirm placement of the DHT (Figure 1). Normally the DHT tip should be placed in the 2nd to 3rd portion of the duodenum and would create a C-shaped tracing on the X-ray. However, in our patient who had history of Roux-en-Y, the DHT bypassed the duodenum and went straight down from the stomach to the jejunum as illustrated in Figure 1. It is important to be aware of this change in anatomy in patients who had a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery in order to confirm accurate placement of DHT.
Hasan Ali1 MD, Huthayfa Ateeli2 MBBS, Bhupinder Natt2 MD FACP, and Sachin Chaudhary2 MD.
1Department of Medicine, Division of Internal Medicine and 2Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep and Allergy
University of Arizona College of Medicine
Tucson, AZ USA
References
- Smoot TM, Xu P, Hilsenrath P, Kuppersmith NC, Singh KP. Gastric bypass surgery in the United States, 1998–2002. Am J Public Health. 2006;96(7):1187–9. [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Santry HP, Gillen DL, Lauderdale DS. Trends in bariatric surgical procedures. JAMA. 2005;294(15):1909–17. [CrossRef] [PubMed]
Cite as: Ali H, Ateeli H, Natt B, Chaudhary S. Medical image of the week: Dobhoff tube placement with Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Southwest J Pulm Crit Care. 2018;16(4):226-7. doi: https://doi.org/10.13175/swjpcc045-18 PDF
Reader Comments (1)
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