Abstract
The patients were 59-year-old and 83-year-old women who came to our hospital because of nausea after drinking agar solution. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed light green and elastic hard foreign bodies of the fist size in the stomach. They were diagnosed as agar bezoars, considering the present history. We attempted to remove them with various instruments endoscopically, but failed. Then, we attempted to insert the endoscopy with a transparent hood into an agar bezoar, and slowly pull it by sucking. We could remove a fragment about 1 cm in size. We repeated this procedure with an overtube. We struggled with difficulties, but could almost completely remove the agar bezoars.
Therefore, this technique may be useful for treating giant and hard agar bezoars. It is considered very dangerous to drink heavy agar solution at hungry time.
