Capillary-venule malformation a microfistulous variant of arteriovenous malformation.

OBJECTIVE To describe typical clinical presentation of patients with microfistular, capillary- venule (CV) malformation as a variant form of arterio-venous malformations (AVM). METHODS A retrospective clinical analysis of 15 patients with CV-AVM confirmed by a computational flow model enrolled in a prospective database of patients with congenital vascular malformation between January 2008 and May 2018. RESULTS Mean age of patients at first time of presentation was 30 years with balanced gender ratio. Presentation was dominated by soft tissue hypertrophy (n=12, 80.0%) and atypical varicose veins (n=11, 73.3%). Anatomical location of enlarged varicose veins gave no uniform pattern and did not correspond to the typical picture of primary varicose vein disease. Most often symptomatic CV-AVM was found at the lower extremities in this series of unselected patients. The most frequent compartment affected was the subcutis (n=14, 93.3%), involvement of muscle was recorded in a third and cutis in a fourth of patients. CONCLUSIONS A high grade of clinical suspicion is needed to recognize CV-AVM and to prevent inadequate therapy due to failed diagnosis