Abstract
Patients with mental disorders receiving long-term psychotropic medications are prone to chronic constipation due to drug-induced bowel movement irregularity, which can often lead to sigmoid volvulus. In addition, such patients sometimes have difficulty describing their symptoms. Our report describes a 59-year-old male institutionalized with mental retardation. He was found lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, not breathing due to food stuck in his throat. With immediate basic life support, the patient recovered from cardiac arrest. Abnormal abdominal swelling was noted, and the patient underwent computed tomography scans that showed sigmoid volvulus. The patient was successfully treated by surgical repair of the volvulus. Our case suggests that providers of emergency medical care should meticulously seek the cause of cardiac arrest while performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, because the cause of the cardiac arrest can be definitively treated by surgery during the hemodynamically unstable post-resuscitation period in patients regaining spontaneous circulation after cardiac arrest, particularly those returning to spontaneous circulation after a short period of basic life support.
