1979 Volume 21 Issue 9 Pages 1078-1085
Vascular spider as well as palmar erythema is one of the signs closely related to liver cirrhosis. It appeare frequently in the skin of the chest, neck and shoulder along the vena cava superior, sometimes in the arms, back and face, and rarely also in the mucous membrane of the nasal cavity, oral cavity and pharynx. A common concept is that the site of occurrence is limited to the upper half of the body. However, we often observed in the rectal mucous membrane the findings of capillary vascular dilatation which closely resembled vascular spider in the skin. We designated it "rectal vascular spider" and examined the rectal membranes of 28 cases of liver cirrhosis, 1 case of CRST syndrome with liver fibrosis, and 7 cases of chronic hepatitis. As the result, rectal vascular spider was verified in 9 cases or 32.1% of the 28 cases of liver cirrhosis. The size ranged from approximately 1.5 to 2.0mm. The morphology of rectal vascular spider was closely observed with a magnifying colonofiberscope type FCS-ML II (MACHIDA) and it was classified into the spider type and the non spider type. Rectal vascular spider had some relationship to vascular spider in the skin, but no specific relationship to palmar erythema and hepatoma, was noted. A relation of an estrogen level in the urine to the incidence of rectal vascular spider was not significant. It is unlikely that the rectal vascular spider is a cause of massive hemorrhage, and its clinical significance will have to be clarified by future studies.
