Successful Treatment of Recurrent Gastrointestinal Bleeding due to Small Intestine Angiodysplasia and Multiple Myeloma with Thalidomide – Two Birds with One Stone

摘要

Gastrointestinal angiodysplasia (GIA) is the most commondigestive tract vascular malformation, often causing recurrentgastrointestinal bleeding. Despite association with certainhereditary diseases [1,2,3], most GIAs are acquired, associatedwith aortic stenosis, hemodialysis, malignancies, or livercirrhosis or idiopathic, and they appear among the elderly (60years) [4]. Advances in endoscopy brought about managementimprovements, but due to numerous lesions disseminated overthe digestive tract, treatment of GIA remains a clinical challenge.Novel studies suggested that the use of thalidomide might bebeneficial in these patients due to its antiangiogenic properties[5,6]. Thalidomide and its modern analogues currently representa backbone treatment of another disease: multiple myeloma(MM) [7]. Here we would like to present a case of successful MMand GIA treatment with thalidomide.