Hernia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Hernia, including details on hiatal, inguinal, umbilical, abdominal, treatment.

Portal hypertensive hemorrhage from a left gastroepiploic vein caput medusa in an adhesed umbilical hernia.

Sze DY, Magsamen KE, McClenathan JH, Keeffe EB, Dake MD

Division of Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology, Stanford University Medical Center, California 94305-5642, USA. dansze@stanford.edu

Caput medusa is a frequent incidental finding in patients with portal hypertension that usually represents paraumbilical vein portosystemic collateral vessels draining into body wall systemic veins. A symptomatic caput medusa was seen in a morbidly obese patient after an umbilical hernia repair, which was fed not by the left portal vein but by the left gastroepiploic vein, in a recurrent adhesed umbilical hernia that likely contained herniated omentum. Refractory hemorrhage from this caput medusa was successfully treated by transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt creation and balloon-occluded variceal sclerosis.

Published 16 February 2005 in J Vasc Interv Radiol, 16(2): 281-5.
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