Exclusively vascular systemic amyloidosis with visceral ischemia.

A patient with multiple myeloma had systemic amyloidosis exclusively confined to the vascular system. These vascular deposits had the typical tinctorial and ultrastructural characteristics of amyloid. At first, the patient clinically had ischemic heart disease, and at postmortem examination was seen to have had acute and chronic ischemic injury of the heart and kidneys due to vascular narrowing by massive amyloid deposits. Exclusively vascular systemic amyloidosis represents a morphologically and clinically distinctive, but uncommon, variant of amyloidosis.