Arteriovenous Fistulae and Arterial Aneurysms of the Pulmonary Arterial Tree

Abstract

This short presentation deals with two patients with pulmonary arteriovenous fistulae and one patient with bilateral pulmonary arterial aneurysms. Extensive clinical investigations have been carried out on two of these patients before they were subjected to resection therapy. Plastic broncho-vascular cast injection studies were made of the specimen from one patient with pulmonary arteriovenous fistulae. A lung from the third patient who was not operated upon but who died owing to a brain abscess complicating multiple pulmonary arteriovenous fistulae supplied the specimen for another vinyl plastic cast injection. Pulmonary Arteriovenous Fistulae Many years elapsed between the original pathologic description of pulmonary arterio-venous fistuale by Wilkens in 1917³⁶ and the first clinical diagnosis of this disease entity by Reading in 1932²⁶ and by Smith and Horton in 1939.³¹ Several years later the first resection of this anomaly was reported by Shenstone.²⁹ Recently a review by Sloan and