Challenges in patients with splanchnic vein thrombosis

Abstract

Splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT) is a heterogeneous disease which involves thrombosis in different abdominal veins, such as portal, mesenteric, splenic and supra-hepatic veins. It also includes different subgroups of patients with peculiar characteristics, such as patients with Budd-Chiari syndrome (BCS), who have a poor prognosis and frequently need interventional procedures or liver transplants (1), and cirrhotic patients, who have a delicate haemostatic balance and a higher incidence of both thromboembolic and bleeding events (2). Given the peculiarities of the cirrhotic population and in order to create a more homogeneous cohort, most studies have focused only on non-malignant non-cirrhotic SVT (3-5).