Abstract
A 27-year-old man with no medical history was brought to our emergency department with a sudden onset of severe upper abdominal pain. Following a moderate meal he had drunk about 500 mL of a sodium bicarbonate drink in one draft. Within 1 minute after drinking the bicarbonate, the patient had severe abdominal pain without nausea or retching. On admission, a computed tomography scan of the upper abdomen and a water-soluble contrast medium swallow showed retromediastinal emphysema and a extravasation of contrast medium from the gastric lesser curvature. Based on these findings, the diagnosis of gastric rupture was made and an emergency operation was performed 6 hours after onset. The patient was successfully treated by simple closure of the perforated stomach and was discharged in good condition 12 days after the operation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of gastric rupture occurring after drinking an entire sodium bicarbonate drink in a single draft.