Background and aim:Noninvasive serum liver fibrosis markers and liver stiffness could be used as predictors of esophageal varices in cirrhotic patients because portal hypertension is related to liver fibrosis. The aim of this study was to cmpare the performance of common serum fibrosis scores and transient elastography in diagnosing esophageal varices and to propose a new algorihm for predicting large varices. Methods: 231 consecutive cirrhotic patients

The performance of percutaneous echoguided biopsy in hepatic tumor diagnosis is limited by several factors, among which tumor characteristics such as tumor type, size and location play an important role. Whit all the advantages offered by ultrasound guidance, the overall sensitivity of this method in the tumor diagnosis has remained around 90%.Contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) guided percutaneous biopsy is a new developed technique aimed at increasing

Purpose Noninvasive diagnosis of liver fibrosis is a popular topic in the medical literature. Textural analysis on B-mode ultrasound is viewed as a noninvasive tool for fibrosis staging. A liver tissue model is proposed and used to simulate ultrasound images. Methods One hundred and twenty-five patients with chronic hepatitis C were included in this study. Patients were investigated using B-mode ultrasound and liver biopsy (Metavir scoring). A texture

This paper presents an automatic tool capable to learn from a patients data set with 24 medical indicators characterizing each sample and to subsequently use the acquired knowledge to differentiate between five degrees of liver fibrosis. The indicators represent clinical observations and the liver stiffness provided by the new, non-invasive procedure of Fibroscan. The proposed technique combines a hill climbing algorithm that selects subsets of important

One rare cause of upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding is represented by the evidence of blood on the papillary level during endoscopy. The differential diagnosis is made between hemobilia and hemosuccus pancreaticus caused by a tumor, hematoma or a pseudoaneurysm which communicates with the pancreatic duct. Upper GI endoscopy must be performed within 24 hours of admission. Advanced age, active bleeding, hypotension or shock, red blood cell transfusion