Traumatic Arteriovenous Fistula Due to an Old Gunshot Injury: A Victim from the Afghanistan War

Abstract

A 75-year-old man referred to the outpatient vascular surgery clinic of Taleghani Hospital (Shaheed Beheshti University of Medicine, Tehran, Iran) due to a local nontender mass in his groin. In his history, it was discovered that the mass had appeared a few months after a gunshot injury. He had a history of shortness of breath with a New York Heart Association functional class fluctuating between II and III, but no history of smoking or addiction. In the physical examination, a 5-cm by 5-cm nonpulsatile mass with engorged vessels was found in the anterior portion of the left groin, which was not tender. An elective arterial angiography revealed an arteriovenous fistula joining the femoral artery to the femoral vein at the left groin. The cardiac assessments revealed cor pulmonale (with a restrictive pattern and diastolic dysfunction) and pulmonary hypertension due to primary pulmonary dysfunction. The patient was anesthetized with a balanced general anesthesia method, considering all relevant cardiac and respiratory monitoring methods and specially withholding drugs increasing pulmonary vascular bed pressure, suppressing the myocardium, or increasing the regurgitant flow across the mitral and, especially, the tricuspid valve. The moment the fistula was closed, a rapid fall in the patient's heart rate was noted, from approximately 60 beats per minute to above 40 beats per minute; this decreased heart rate continued up to a few hours after the surgery and did not accompany any significant hemodynamic derangement including the patient's blood pressure. The patient received his postoperative care in the ordinary surgical ward and was discharged a few days later.