A case of melena caused by a hepatic aneurysm ruptured into the intrahepatic bile duct in a patient with allergic granulomatous angiitis.

Abstract

A 46 year old woman was admitted to our institute in June, 1987 with an attack of asthma, as well as remittent fever and leukocytosis accompanied by hypereosinophilia. She was found to have melena from an unknown source upon gastrointestinal examination. Four low-density areas were found in the liver on computed tomography and one of the intrahepatic foci formed a large extrahepatic abscess communicating with the intrahepatic duct on tubography. Resection of the four hepatic segments, including the large abscess, and cholecystectomy were performed. Healed necrotizing arteritis was histopathologically observed in the resected liver specimen, with the four low-density areas on CT scan having all been necrotic foci. One of them formed an intrahepatic biliary fistula and rupture of a hepatic aneurysm into a biliary duct was found to be the cause of melena. Although eosinophil infiltration and extravascular granuloma were not observed, a diagnosis of allergic granulomatous angiitis was made from the characteristic clinical course, systemic vasculitis and peripheral blood eosinophilia. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of intrahepatic duct perforation most probably being caused by hepatic aneurysm rupture in a patient with allergic granulomatous angiitis.