Angiography in angiomatous lesions of the gastrointestinal tract

Twenty patients with various angiomatous lesions of the gastrointestinal tract, such as right-colon angiodysplasia and manifestations of Rendu-Osler-Weber disease and Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome are reported. During the past 15 years an increasing number of such lesions have been reported, diagnosed mainly by angiography. The major complication from these vascular lesions is bleeding. Angiography is the primary method for their detection because of their often small size and is a prerequisite before surgery when reason exists for anticipating an angiomatous lesion as the source of bleeding. However, in certain cases angiography will fail to demonstrate the vascular abnormality or its full extent.