VIDEO: What’s in a name? How GI lesions carry the name Dieulafoy
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In this Endo-Sketch, a Healio video series on clinical conditions named after famous colleagues, Klaus Mergener, MD, of the University of Washington School of Medicine, discusses the origin of the Dieulafoy lesion.
According to Mergener, the lesion was named after Paul Georges Dieulafoy, a French internist and pathologist born in 1839 in Toulouse, France. He held various leadership positions at hospitals in Paris before he joined the famous “Hotel-Dieu” hospital in 1887, where he was professor of internal pathology and later became chief of medicine.
“The lesion that now carries his name had been described before, but Dieulafoy is credited with describing the abnormality with much greater precision in a case series published in 1898 that included three of his own cases and a review of four other cases available in the literature at that time,” Mergener said. “He recognized quite correctly that this lesion represents something different from the typical peptic ulcer, in that there is no significant ulceration but essentially normal healthy gastric mucosa surrounding the bleeding vessel.”
The Dieulafoy lesion, which the French physician initially referred to as “Exulceratio Simplex,” causes massive gastrointestinal bleeding, can be difficult to spot and requires thorough assessment of the stomach during an upper endoscopy.
“The etiology of Dieulafoy lesions remains unknown, but we need to be aware of them as a possible cause of upper GI bleeding and look for them carefully,” Mergener added. “Nowadays, these bleeds are being treated endoscopically, with either cautery or clip placement or sometimes with banding of the lesion.”
Mergener notes that Georges Dieulafoy’s contributions to medicine surpassed the description of the lesion: He is also known for developing the Dieulafoy aspirator, as well as publishing the Manual of Internal Pathology, which went through 16 editions during Georges Dieulafoy’s lifetime.
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