Dr Kenji Sasaki
Home Medical Care Supporting Clinic Sendai, Japan
Title: Bleeding ectatic vascular lesion involving the sigmoid colon, endoscopically indistinguishable from angiodysplasia, in an 8-year-old boy
Biography
Biography: Dr Kenji Sasaki
Abstract
An 8-year-old Japanese boy was hospitalized, complaining of active hematochezia. He was shown to have a cherry-red, blood-oozing area of vascular dilatation with mucosal prominence in the sigmoid colon by endoscopy but had no other mucocutaneous vascular abnormalities. His family history was noncontributory. Under the clinical diagnosis of angiodysplasia of the sigmoid colon, he underwent an elliptical resection of the part, based on the intraoperative endoscopic findings. Histological examination of the specimen, however, revealed a totally different picture from that seen in angiodysplasia: the thin-walled, markedly ectatic, nontortuous veins with hemorrhage were seen only just below the muscularis mucosae, around which the normal ones were shown to coexist. He has had no rebleeding for the past several years. This lesion is considered to be an isolated congenital visceral telangiectasia involving veins.