European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Introduction: With the rising mortality rate, worldwide liver cirrhosis has been ranked as the 13th leading cause of mortality. Portal hypertension is one of the common consequences of liver cirrhosis. Further, portal hypertension has its own complications and the most serious among them is the risk of development of esophageal varices (EV) caused by increased hepatic vascular resistance related to hepatic fibrosis and regenerative nodules. Methodology: A prospective study was carried out at the tertiary care hospital of, MKCG Hospital between September 2019 To November 2021. All patients of cirrhosis of liver without history of gastrointestinal bleed, irrespective of etiology, admitted in the hospital were included in this prospective study. Result: Among the patients studied males predominate the study population with 86% with females accounting for only 14%. Among the study population majority presented with abdominal distension constituting 86% followed by pedal oedema constituting 70%. Among 50 patients studied, cause of cirrhosis was found to be alcoholism in 78% and Non-alcoholic in 22%. Discussion: The platelet count and the spleen size showed the difference among the patients belonging to small varices and larger varices group, respectively. presence of thrombocytopenia and lower PC/SD ratio determine the presence of higher grades of varices and can hence identify the subset of patients who require high priority endoscopy for the prophylactic management of esophageal varices helping in better patient selection.