European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Background: Portal hypertension is a major consequence of cirrhosis and is responsible for its most severe complications, including ascites, bleeding from gastro-oesophageal varices and encephalopathy. Measuring HVPG is very ideal to diagnosis and to grade severity. But the drawback of this procedure is its invasiveness leading to complications. So, a simple, routinely available, cost effective method for severity assessment of portal hypertension would be attractive. Methodology: It was a cross sectional study which included patients diagnosed as Chronic liver disease attending to the OPD as well as in-patients. Results: This study included a total of 100 subjects who had esophageal varices secondary to liver cirrhosis with portal hypertension. Majority of the patients were in the age group of 36 to 45 years (31%) with mean age of study subjects being 47.43 with male preponderance (87%). A statistically significant association was found for splenic size and esophageal variceal grading. 57% of the patients had splenomegaly between 13-15cm size of which 22 % had grade 3 esophageal varices followed grade 1 varices who constituted 17%. 20% of the patients had spleen size >15cm. Conclusion: Ultrasonographic measurement of spleen size > 13 cm can be considered as non-invasive predictor of presence of esophageal varices and grading in patients with Cirrhosis with portal hypertension along with other measurements like portal vein diameter and platelet count