A family reunion: a study of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia.

AN abundant literature exists concerning hereditary telangiectasia. The early descriptions were by Sutton (1864), Legg (1876), Rendou (1896), Osler (1901) and Weber (1907). The usual eponym associated with the disease includes the last three writers. Most of the articles in the literature concern case reports of only a few individuals in relatively small families. The present study of a large kindred having hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia was stimulated by a sixty-year-old man seen repeatedly in the Hospital and Clinics of the University of Oklahoma for recurrent bleeding episodes. He invited us to his annual family reunion, where approximately 200 kinsmen extended . . .