Antler Sign in Pulmonary Venous Hypertension

Transcript of the video: Now we will discuss a chest X-ray showing antler sign in pulmonary venous hypertension. For a change, first we will see the picture of a stag, with antlers. You can see the antlers here. So, the shape of the upper lobe vessels in venous hypertension, pulmonary venous hypertension, will be resembling the antlers of the stag. That is why, the name antler sign has been given. These are the dilated upper lobe vessels, in  a person with pulmonary venous hypertension and this is known as the antler sign. Other names are inverted moustache sign, cephalization, and redistribution. Redistribution because, normally, vascularity is more in the lower zones, than in the upper zones, due to the effect of gravity. But due to vasoconstriction when pulmonary venous hypertension develops, there is redistribution to the upper zones. That is what we are seeing here and in conventional old chest X-rays, there was a measurement which was being taken. Width of this vein, vessel, should be more than 3 mm or more. But now with miniature X-rays of different sizes coming through, you cannot depend on the absolute measurement, you can see the pattern.