[Estimation of portal pressure using the theory of quantification]

An attempt was made to estimate noninvasively portal pressure (PP) in patients with chronic liver disease, using the theory of quantification, a kind of multivariate analysis. Forty-one patients with liver cirrhosis and 22 patients with chronic hepatitis in whom hepatic venous catheterization had been performed were studied. Seventeen parameters (age, sex, mean blood pressure, red blood cell count, platelet count, prothrombin time, lactate dehydrogenase, alkaline phosphatase, total bilirubin, albumin, gamma-globulin, indocyanine green retention at 15 min, blood urea nitrogen, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, ascites and edema) were selected for the estimation of PP. The estimated PP correlated significantly with the data obtained by hepatic venous catheterization with a high correlation coefficient of 0.835 (p less than 0.01). An investigation using the theory of quantification was also undertaken to determine which of the 17 parameters selected above was most useful in estimating PP. Among the 17 parameters indocyanine green retention at 15 min, red blood cell count, prothrombin time, hepatomegaly and splenomegaly seemed to contribute significantly to the estimation of PP. When the formula was applied to 31 successive patients with chronic liver disease (external samples), the correlation between the estimated and measured PP was 0.455 (p less than 0.01). These results indicate that the formula is clinically useful in estimating PP in patients with chronic liver disease.