RE: endovascular treatment of congenital intrahepatic portosystemic shunts with Amplatzer plugs.

Dear Editor:

We would like to congratulate Dr. Sae Ah Lee and collaborators for their interesting report about the endovascular treatment of a congenital intrahepatic portosystemic shunt with the use of an Amplatzer vascular plug (AVP) (1).

The reported case and images are very clear and instructive.

However, we are writing to you in order to highlight an error related to a claimed statement of primacy, specifically about the use of this kind of device for this indication as mentioned in the fifth paragraph of the discussion section.

In our paper entitled "Endovascular treatment of congenital portal vein fistulas with the Amplatzer occlusion device" published in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology in 2004, we already reported the use of the AVP in the treatment of an intrahepatic portosystemic venous shunt (2).

This situation does not undervalue the quality of the reported case, but for didactic purposes, we believe it is important to state that the work of Dr. Lee confirms, as was previously reported, that these devices are useful and safe for these rare situations.

Sincerely yours,