Gastric antral vascular ectasia (GAVE) is an uncommon cause of chronic gastrointestinal bleeding or iron deficiency anemia.

[1][2] The condition is associated with dilated small blood vessels in the gastric antrum, which is a distal part of the stomach.

[6] GAVE is associated with a number of conditions, including portal hypertension, chronic kidney failure, and collagen vascular diseases.

[9] In fact: Most patients with GAVE suffer from liver cirrhosis, autoimmune disease, chronic kidney failure and bone marrow transplantation.

The typical initial presentations range from occult bleeding causing transfusion-dependent chronic iron-deficiency anemia to severe acute gastrointestinal bleeding.The endoscopic appearance of GAVE is similar to portal hypertensive gastropathy, but is not the same condition, and may be concurrent with cirrhosis of the liver.

[6] The Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (GARD) states that pernicious anemia is one of the conditions associated with GAVE,[18] and one separate study showed that over three-fourths of the patients in the study with GAVE had some kind of vitamin B12 deficiency including the associated condition pernicious anemia.

[citation needed] Research in 2010 has shown that anti-RNA polymerase III antibodies may be used as a risk marker for GAVE in systemic sclerosis patients.

GAVE is treated commonly by means of an endoscope, including argon plasma coagulation (APC) and electrocautery.

Symptomatic treatment includes iron supplementation and blood transfusion for cases with severe anemia; proton pump inhibitors may ameliorate the background chronic gastritis and minute erosions that commonly co-existed in biopsy reports.

"[7] A transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS or TIPSS) procedure is used to treat portal hypertension when that is present as an associated condition.

[24] The patient, with their physician and family, must balance out a reduction in bleeding caused by TIPS with the significant risk of encephalopathy.

[22][23][24] Various shunts have been shown in a meta-study of 22 studies to be effective treatment to reduce variceal bleeding, yet none have any demonstrated survival advantage.

[24] Also, "antibiotics such as neomycin, metronidazole, and rifaximin" may be used effectively to treat the encephalopathy by removing nitrogen-producing bacteria from the gut.

[27] In 2010, a team of Japanese surgeons performed a "novel endoscopic ablation of gastric antral vascular ectasia".