The esophageal varix rupture with massive bleeding is one of the most serious complications in liver cirrhosis.
Various methods to direct the portal blood into the systemic circulation were devised and they protect against further hemorrhage from esophageal varices, but there remain many pro-blems related to the selection of the method, technical difficulties, rebleeding, high surgical mortality in poor risk patients, postoperative ascites and high incidence of hepatic encephalo-pathy after shunt procedure.
Recently many surgeons have tendency to prefer the mesocaval shunt.
Drapanasl) and Lord 2) reported excellent results for the mesocaval H shunt using Dacron or Teflon prosthetic graft.
In addition, Nay and Fitzpatrick3) treated ruptured esophageal varices successfully by creating mesocaval H shunt using autogenous vein from right external iliac vein.
During the last 5 years, the authors treated a group of 11 patients with bleeding esophageal varices by performing mesocaval H shunt using Dacron and Teflon prosthetic tubes, and its clinical experience and results were reported.
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