RESEARCH ARTICLE


Yin-Yang Sign in Arteriovenous Fistula Pseudoaneurysm



Daniel J Castro Pereira*, 1, John Gemery 2, Martin Sedlacek 1
1 Department of Medicine, Section of Nephrology and Hypertension, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, USA
2 Department of Radiology, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, USA


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Creative Commons License
© Pereira et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the 38 Woodhill Rd Milford, CT 06461, USA; Tel: 203 807 6280; E-mail: castropereira.daniel@gmail.com




We present a 76-year-old female with history of end stage renal disease secondary to hypertension and diabetes mellitus on hemodialysis using a right radio cephalic arteriovenous fistula who was scheduled for a fistulogram given recurrent infiltration at the time of cannulation. Ultrasonography (US) performed prior to angiography showed a 3 cm pseudoaneurysm which was identified originating from the peripheral aspect of the outflow cephalic vein showing the Yin- Yang sign (Fig. 1). It was successfully thrombosed with the injection of thrombin. Venography central to the access did show a tortuous course but did not have evidence of outflow stenosis.

Fig. (1).

Pseudoaneurysm of the outflow cephalic vein.


Fig. (2).

Yin- yang sign noted on color Doppler US.


The Yin-Yang, an ancient Chinese symbol is sometimes alluded to in radiology when evaluating aneurysmal vascular structures. [1]. This can be seen both in contrast enhanced CT scan and US with color Doppler (Fig. 2), in the former one portion of the vessel shows reduced attenuation due to the mural thrombus whereas the patent portion of the lumen demonstrates increased attenuation as still has flowing blood. [2]. In our case, the Yin- Yang sign indicates bidirectional flow due to swirling of blood within the pseudoaneurysm as the portion that is moving toward the transducer is red and the portion that is moving away from the transducer is blue [3].

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors confirm that this article content has no conflict of interest.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Declared none.

References

[1] Lupattelli T. The yin-yang sign Radiology 2006; 238(3): 1070-1.
[2] Ghera P, Hayes D Jr. Rare cause of dyspnea: yin-yang thoracic aortic aneurysm Lung 2014; 192(2): 335-7.
[3] Mistry KA, Bashir O. Yin-Yang sign [internet] [Accessed March 03 2015] http://radiopaediaorg/articles/yin-yangsign- 1