A rare internal jugular vein phlebectasia: Review of the literature

Hamit Serdar Başbuğ; Hakan Göçer; Yalçın Günerhan; Ahmet Erdem; Kanat Özışık

doi:10.5606/tgkdc.dergisi.2016.12800

Hamit Serdar Başbuğ¹, Hakan Göçer¹, Yalçın Günerhan¹, Ahmet Erdem², Kanat Özışık¹

¹Departments of Cardiovascular Surgery, Medical Faculty of Kafkas University, Kars, Turkey
²Departments of Radiology, Medical Faculty of Kafkas University, Kars, Turkey

DOI : 10.5606/tgkdc.dergisi.2016.12800

Internal jugular vein phlebectasia is a rare condition that presents with neck swelling. It can be either unilateral or bilateral, and becomes apparent with Valsalva. It is a congenital malformation and usually encountered in childhood. The term phlebectasia differs from aneurysm. While the former has a homogenous fusiform dilatation of the whole length of the vein, a localized ectasia is observed in the latter. Phlebectasia also differs from the varices due to the lack of tortuosity. It is usually asymptomatic and diagnosed incidentally. Although its etiology is unknown, it has become more detectable thanks to the availability of superior imaging techniques. In this article, we present an adult patient with unilateral left-sided internal jugular vein phlebectasia with radiological images. To our knowledge, there are only about 50 cases in the recent literature most of which are children.

Keywords : Aneurysm; internal jugular vein; phlebectasia

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