Bleeding from gastrointestinal ectopic varices is not associated with haemorrhage from oesophageal or gastric varices

Introduction
Ectopic varices are those that appear in a different region of the gastroesophageal junction. Bleeding from ectopic varices is rare but is usually massive and deadly.

Aim
To identify the possible factors that cause bleeding from ectopic varices in patients with portal hypertension.

Material and methods
A cross-sectional and retrospective study; the data were collected between January 2004 and June 2014. We included patients with portal hypertension and gastrointestinal ectopic varices diagnosed by endoscopy.

Results
We found 31 patients with gastrointestinal ectopic varices. Of these, 25 had liver cirrhosis, and six showed non-cirrhotic portal hypertension. There were 16 men and 15 women in the study. The median age of the patients was 60 years (range minimum–maximum of 27 to 80 years). Nineteen (61%) patients had rectal varices, 10 (32%) had duodenal varices, 1 (3%) had ileal varices, and 1 (3%) had colonic varices. We found bleeding in 4 (13%) of the 31 patients with ectopic varices; two belonged to the cirrhosis group, and the other two were from the non-cirrhotic portal hypertension group. Three of the 4 patients with bleeding from gastrointestinal ectopic varices had exhibited haemorrhage from oesophageal varices (odds ratio = 4.09, 95% CI: 0.37–44.78, p = 0.249), but none of them showed bleeding from gastric varices.

Conclusions
Bleeding from gastrointestinal ectopic varices is not necessarily associated with bleeding from oesophageal or gastric varices.