Small hepatic veins Budd-Chiari syndrome

Abstract

Budd-Chiari syndrome is a rare disorder characterized by hepatic venous outflow obstruction at any level from the small hepatic veins to the atrio-caval junction, in the absence of heart failure or constrictive pericarditis. Various imaging modalities are available for investigating the gross hepatic vascular anatomy but there are rare forms of this disease where the obstruction is limited to the small intrahepatic veins, with normal appearance of the large hepatic veins at imaging. In this cases only a liver biopsy can demonstrate the presence of a small vessels outflow block. We report two cases of small hepatic veins Budd-Chiari syndrome. © 2013 The Author(s).