Infiltrative fibrosis with acute hemorrhagic intestinal infarction: association with a peritoneovenous shunt.

This article describes an unusual complication of acute hemorrhagic infarction of the gastrointestinal tract that developed in a 53-year-old man 3 years after a Denver peritoneovenous shunt was implanted for control of cirrhotic ascites. Infiltrative fibrosis, which involved the bowel and mesentery and surrounded its blood vessels, was the cause of the infarction. A spectrum of this fibroproliferative disease in patients with cirrhosis with ascites and peritoneovenous shunts is described, and possible pathogenetic mechanisms are discussed.