One of the scariest things that patients can come in with is a clot to the superior mesenteric artery.

In other words, acute mesentery ischemia.

And if you've spent any time in the hospital, you know these patients are in a great deal of pain, they are extremely sick,

their guts are actually dying, and they can become so asidotic they could code.

And so it is a true emergency.

And so when you learn about acute mesereic ischemia, it became a condition that stayed with you.

But there was a lesser known condition known as Superior Mesentereic artery syndrome,

a condition that made self known to myself. my

injury syndrome, a condition that made self known to myself, just out of the textbooks and in the wards

just in the last few weeks.

And so I wanted to share with you this case that's going to be a teaching point and the topic of this

week's podcast. I'm Dr. Niket Son Paul, your friendly neighborhood internist and

gastrantroologist, and we're not going to be talking about acute mesenteric

eschemia, which is basically just an myocardial

infarction but of the gut. We're going to be talking about SMA syndrome and how it

presents and how to recognize it. So, cue that music. So what is SMA syndrome or superior mesenteric artery syndrome?

Well it's basically a rare cause of duodinal obstruction and basically what's happening is the duodenum

is being extrinsically compressed between the SMA and the aorta. And we know

that it's not that common. It was first described back in a textbook in 1842 and then there was a case

series in 1927 and so it was called Wilkie's Syndrome but the term

SMA Syndrome is a little bit more appropriate to help understand what's going on.

Now how common is this condition?

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