CASE REPORT article
Front. Med.
Sec. Intensive Care Medicine and Anesthesiology
Cardiac Arrest Caused by Acute Gastric Dilatation in a Bulimia Patient: A Case Report
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China, Chengdu, China
- 2Sichuan Academy of Medical Sciences and Sichuan People's Hospital, Chengdu, China
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This case report describes a young female patient with a long-standing history of bulimia nervosa a who developed acute gastric dilatation (AGD) following a binge-eating episode. The patient declined surgical intervention, leading to rapid clinical deterioration and cardiac arrest. Despite achieving return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) after cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), followed by emergency surgery and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support, she remained hemodynamically unstable and eventually died. This case highlights the critical severity of AGD and underscores the importance of early surgical intervention, while also discussing the limitations of ECMO in managing non-cardiogenic shock.
Keywords: acute, arrest3, Bulimia, Cardiac, dilatation2, Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)4, gastric, nervosa1
Received: 03 Nov 2025; Accepted: 27 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Cai, Song, Peng, Jiang and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hua Jiang
Ping Zhou
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