Treatment of Rapunzel Syndrome – Gastrostomy or Gastrotomy?

was used five times in the article, and we therefore presumed it had not been written by mistake. However, when we read the references cited in the article, which referred to the ‘gastrostomy’ procedure that had been performed, it became obvious that not ‘gastrostomy’ but the ‘gastrotomy’ procedure had been performed. In conclusion, when a foreign body exists in the stomach cavity, for its removal, not ‘gastrostomy’ but ‘gastrotomy’ is the proper therapeutic procedure. Dear Sir, We read with great interest the article of Naik et al. [1] entitled ‘Rapunzel Syndrome Reviewed and Redefined’. The article was aptly designed and all the current literature about Rapunzel syndrome was analyzed in detail, offering satisfactory data about the subject. Three cases were presented in the above article and it was stated that ‘gastrostomy’ was performed in all 3 patients, however we could not understand the justification for performing ‘gastrostomy’. If the ‘gastrostomy’ procedure had been performed, we wondered how long it was used in the patients. In the Discussion section of the article, ‘gastrostomy’ was defined as the preferred therapy model for the treatment of Rapunzel syndrome. However, in the current literature, ‘anterior gastrotomy’ is pointed out as being the preferred method of treatment for Rapunzel syndrome [2–7] . ‘Gastrostomy’ Published online: February 22, 2008