An 18-year-old man lost consciousness three times in six months, and his brain scan, neck artery ultrasound, brain wave test, and cardiac MRI all came back normal. The likely culprit, doctors in Greece concluded, was sitting in his abdomen: a single artery set at such a steep angle that it was squeezing both his small intestine and the main vein draining his left kidney.
The case, published online in Radiology Case Reports on July 21, 2026, describes two rare compression disorders occurring together. One is Wilkie syndrome, better known as superior mesenteric artery (SMA) syndrome. The other is nutcracker syndrome. The pairing itself has been reported before, but the authors, from the University of Ioannina and other Greek institutions, described this as the first reported case in which the combination showed up mainly as fainting spells and frequent extra heartbeats.
