Plummer-Vinson Syndrome

Synonyms

Paterson-Brown-Kelly syndrome; Paterson-Kelly syndrome; Sideropenic dysphagia; Waldenström and Kjellberg syndrome

Definition

Plummer-Vinson syndrome is the most common name attributed to the association of dysphagia, upper esophageal webs, and iron-deficiency anemia. Henry Stanley Plummer and Porter Paisley Vinson were the American physicians who first reported clinical cases of patients with this entity. However, its full description was done later by the British laryngologists Donald Ross Paterson and Adam Brown-Kelly. Waldenström and Kjellberg later documented cases of the syndrome also occurring with sideropenia without anemia.

The pathogenesis of Plummer-Vinson syndrome (PVS) remains unknown, but the main purposed theories are based on nutritional deficiencies (mainly of iron) or autoimmune phenomenon. The syndrome’s diagnosis implies iron deficiency, with or without anemia, and this deficiency is proposed to lead both to atrophy of the esophageal mucosa, with formation...