A case of early postoperative inferior mesenteric arteriovenous fistula is de scribed in a sixty-three-year-old man who underwent an anterior resection of the rectum for carcinoma.
Six weeks after surgery, he developed increasingly severe rectal bleeding. A single incident of copious bleeding caused him to go into shock and require resuscitation. A selective angiography revealed an arteriovenous fistula of the inferior mesenteric artery, which was managed by embolization of the artery by three spring steel coils.
These rare postoperative arteriovenous fistulae are probably caused by the incorporation of an artery and vein in a single stitch or ligature and usually present many years after surgery.
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