Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum

Abstract

Summary Attention is drawn to a rare but important cause of massive gastro‐intestinal haemorrhage. The essential pathological change of pseudoxanthoma is a fragmentation of elastic tissue, which often involves blood vessel walls. Two cases of repeated massive haemorrhage due to this disease are reported.

A Lateral Duodenal Diverticulum

“…There was no malnutrition to suggest scurvy and on the skin there were no telangiectases to suggest Osler's hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia. There were scleral pingueculae but no coarsening nor yellow discoloration of the skin, nor any angioid streaks of the retina, features of pseudoxanthoma elasticum a condition in which massive even fatal gastro-intestinal haemorrhage can occur (Berlyne, 1960;Connell, 1962). The previous history and repeated normality of the bleeding times make unlikely the congenital haemorrhagic disorders of blood vessels and platelets, such as the socalled constitutional thrombopathy of von Willebrand and Glanzmann's thrombasthenia.…”