[Watermelon stomach: Chronic renal failure and/or imatinib?]

Watermelon stomach or gastric antral vascular ectasia (GAVE) syndrome is an uncommon cause of sometimes severe upper gastro-intestinal bleeding. Essentially based on a pathognomonic endoscopic appearance, its diagnosis may be unrecognised because mistaken with portal hypertensive gastropathy, while treatment of these two entities is different. Its etiopathogeny remains still unclear, even if it is frequently associated with different systemic illnesses as hepatic cirrhosis, autoimmune disorders and chronic renal failure. The mechanism inducing these vascular ectasia may be linked with mechanical stress on submucosal vessels due to antropyloric peristaltic motility dysfunction modulated by neurohormonal vasoactive alterations. Because medical therapies are not very satisfactory, among the endoscopic modalities, argon plasma coagulation seems to be actually the first-line treatment because the most effective and safe. However, surgical antrectomy may be sometimes necessary. Recently GAVE syndrome appeared as a new adverse reaction of imatinib mesylate, one of the tyrosine kinase inhibitors used in chronic myeloid leukemia, and we report here the observation of such a pathology in one patient treated at the same time by haemodialysis and by imatinib mesylate for chronic myeloid leukemia.