Abstract
Case 1 is a 60-year-old woman who entered our hospital with complaints of hematemesis, melena and epistaxis. She had a long history of recurrent epistaxis but had no external skin and mucosal telangiectatic lesions. The diagnosis of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia was made endoscopically with characteristic multiple gastric telangiectatic lesions. Case 2 is a 54-year-old man who had been under treatment of lumbago and was referred to us for the management of gastrointestinal bleeding and epistaxis. Endoscopically, multiple gastric telangiectatic lesions were found, which were bleeding during endoscopic observation. In both cases, GI bleeding were controlled by the conventional therapy but epistaxis was not. After a few weeks of hormone therapy, epistaxis was decreased in frequency to one third and a half than before respectively. The adverse effects of this therapy were transient breast discomfort in case 1 and painful gynecomastia in case 2, However, these were not so serious as to abandon the therapy. From these experiences, we think that a systemic hormone therapy would be a suitable method of reducing the tendency of epistaxis and probably GI bleeding.
