I am a student doing my peds rotation and cared for a teenage girl who was diagnosed with this syndrome. She was post-op from having angioplasty on both the R & L common iliac veins. She had a history of injury to her left foot and lost some sensation and it was always cold to the touch. Eventually the diagnosis was made and then the surgery was performed.
If you read the description of the syndrome, only the L vein should have been affected... So why did they do the angioplasty on both? The syndrome was new to the nurses on the floor and my instructor so no one had an answer.
"In medicine, May-Thurner syndrome is a rare condition in which blood clots, called deep venous thrombosis (DVT), occur in the iliofemoral vein due to compression of the common venous outflow tract of the left lower extremity. The specific problem is compression of the left common iliac vein by the overlying right common iliac artery.[1][2] This leads to pooling or stasis of blood, predisposing the individual to the formation of blood clots. Classically, May-Thurner syndrome can only occur in the left leg, since the artery does not acutely overlap the vein in the right leg. A broader disease profile known as nonthrombotic iliac vein lesions (NIVL) can involve both the right and left iliac veins as well as multiple other named venous segments."
