[Clinical and prognostic significance of degenerative liver parenchyma damage]

Starting from the question, whether the morphological substrate of the degenerative damage of the liver parenchyma possesses an adequate clinical and prognostic valency 127 patients with histologically ascertained findings underwent a secondary examination over a period from 1 to 8 years (average 4 years). In two thirds of the patients the occurrence of a virus hepatitis in the anamnesis was conspicuous so that the suggestion of causal connections is obvious. An important clinical symptom of the degenerative damage of the liver parenchyma represent the findings of a hepatomegaly in the majority of the patients. Only in pathological results the laboratory-chemical parameters allowed diagnostic conclusions. Controls of the course, in which in 80 patients clinical and biochemical investigations as well as in 47 patients additional histological investigations of the liver were the basis, showed an involution in 48 patients (37.8%). 58 cases (45.7%) had a constant course of the disease. In 21 patients (16.5%) the degenerative damage of the liver parenchyma showed a processing tendency. Most patients with morphologically ascertained progressing courses of the disease gave anamnestic and/or histological references to a virus hepatitis gone through. The morphological substrate of the degenerative damage of the liver parenchyma partly by all means a value of a disease is to be ascribed to. The possibility of a transition stage to a defined chronic hepatopathy which is not to be excluded in several cases renders controls of the course necessary.