The evaluation of portal hypertension in cirrhotic patients with spectral computed tomography

Iodine concentrations measured using dual-energy spectral CT (DESCT) have been recently proposed as providing good performance for examining tissues hemodynamics.

To evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of DESCT-derived parameters in evaluating portal venous pressure in patients with liver cirrhosis.

A total of 71 patients with liver cirrhosis who underwent percutaneous transhepatic portal vein puncture procedures were included in this study. All participants underwent DESCT and gastrointestinal endoscopy within one month before the operation. The direct portal venous pressure of each participant was measured preoperatively.

Stepwise multivariate linear regression analysis showed that the iodine concentrations in the portal vein and hepatic parenchyma during the portal venous phase and the platelet count were independently correlated with the direct portal venous pressure (P < 0.001, P < 0.001, and P = 0.030, respectively). Receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed that the normalized iodine concentration of the hepatic parenchyma had the best performance for identifying clinically significant portal hypertension (≥10 mmHg), esophageal varices, and high-risk esophageal varices (the area under the curve values were 0.951, 0.932, and 0.960, respectively).

The normalized iodine concentration of the hepatic parenchyma is a reliable parameter to non-invasively assess portal venous pressure in patients with liver cirrhosis.