Portacaval Shunts in the Treatment of Portal Hypertension

Abstract

A NEW chapter is being written on the treatment of portal hypertension with bleeding esophageal varices. Eck,¹ in 1877, was the first to demonstrate that the portal vein can be anastomosed to the inferior vena cava in animal experiments. From then until 1945 only a few sporadic attempts of portacaval shunts in human beings were reported in the literature. Most of these were unsuccessful, but with the recent favorable reports of Whipple² in 1945 and Blakemore^{3 , 4} in 1945 and 1947, a renewed interest has been stimulated in this subject. These authors have described two types of venous shunts to reduce . . .