CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Gastric and Esophageal Cancers
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1516064
Case Report: An azygos vein aneurysm with dysphagia assisted diagnosis by esophageal endoscopic ultrasonography
Provisionally accepted
- Shaanxi Provincial People's Hospital, Xi'an, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Background: Azygos vein aneurysm (AVA) is a rare thoracic pathology that is frequently misdiagnosed. While contrast-enhanced chest CT or MRI can delineate AVA location and size, they lack the capability for dynamic real-time assessment of internal architecture. Case presentation: We present a highly unusual case of a 67-year-old woman who had an isolated azygos vein aneurysm presenting with dysphagia. The mass was firstly found by a chest X-ray. Subsequent contrast-enhanced chest CT revealed a 3.5×3.74×1.4 cm soft-tissue mass in the posterior mediastinum suggestive of a lymph node. In contrast, esophageal endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) demonstrated intact esophageal mucosa with extrinsic stenosis. The dynamic observation through EUS displayed that the mass was really not a lymph node in fact but a solitary cystic lesion, without the internal blood flow, and there was no communication with the posterior azygos vein and the aorta. We considered the dysphagia was caused by the cystic lesion. Thoracoscopic surgery was finally performed, which confirmed it is an AVA with pathology. Conclusions: EUS is one of the most effective and vital for preoperative evaluation of AVA.
Keywords: dysphagia, Azygos vein aneurysm(AVA), Mediastinal mass, Cystic lesion, endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS)
Received: 23 Oct 2024; Accepted: 28 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Guo, Xu, Cao and Jin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yan Jin, Shaanxi Provincial People's Hospital, Xi'an, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.