Abnormal gastric emptying in patients with liver cirrhosis

Twenty-eight patients (aged: 44-76 years) with liver cirrhosis secondary to chronic hepatitis were included in this study. None of the patients had a history of gastric surgery, diabetes, hypothyroidism, or neurological or collagen vascular disease. The patients were divided into groups based on the presence or absence of the following conditions: (1) ascites, (2) splenomegaly, (3) esophageal varices. Radionuclide labelled solid meals were used to evaluate gastric emptying (GE). GE was represented by the gastric retention ratio of the solid meal at 90 min (RR90), and calculated by the following formula: RR90 = residual radioactivity within the region of interest (ROI) covered the whole stomach at 90 min divided by the initial radioactivity within the ROI at 0 min. The RR90 values of the patients were compared with the RR90 values of 25 normal control volunteers. If the RR90 was more than two standard deviations (SD) above the mean of the control group (> 0.687), GE was defined as abnormal. The results showed 71% (20/ 28) of the cirrhotic patients had abnormal GE. Patients with ascites, splenomegaly, or esophageal varices had higher RR90 values than patients without ascites, splenomegaly or esophageal varices. The differences in RR90 among patients with and without ascites, and patients with and without splenomegaly, were not significant (P values > 0.05). However, there were significant differences among the 2 patient groups separated according to the presence or absence of esophageal varices (P values < 0.05). In addition, poor correlations (R square values < 0.01) were found for RR90 and serum values of bilirubin and albumin.