The CT Finding Of Peripheral Pulmonary Artery Dilatation Associated With Liver Cirrhosis

Objective:To investigate the features and diagnostic value of CT of peripheral pulmonary artery dilatation associated with liver cirrhosis. To study the relationship among peripheral pulmonary artery dilatation and Child-Pugh classification and the age.Material and method:540patients with liver cirrhosis, who were treated at Tianjin Third Hospital, from January2011to October2012,were included in the study. All patients were Selected by the following requirements:1,the patient had chest CT examination during the cirrhosis.2,the patient who never smoke or had the non-smoking history over6years.3,the patient had no other disease which can cause the change of the pulmonary artery, including:(1)which can cause significant changes of pulmonary artery, such as increased pulmonary blood flow by congenital heart disease like atrial septal defect and ventricular septal defect; right cardiac output increased disease such as have a fever,hyperthyroidism, hypoxia;pulmonary hypertension caused by pulmonary embolism plug; pulmonary venous hypertension caused by mitral stenosis and left atrial tumor; pulmonary edema due to heart disease,nephritis,uremia,brain lesions and so on.(2)lung anatomy has a distorted appearance caused by pulmonary fibrosis.(3)obvious thoracic and spinal deformity.4,the patient without other lung diseases:such as acute or chronic bronchitis, upper and lower respiratory tract infection, pulmonary emphysema, pulmonary heart disease, bronchial asthma, pulmonary tuberculosis, pulmonary abscess, interstitial lung disease, sarcoidosis, lung cancer etc. A total of112cases of hepatic cirrhosis comprised the experimental group.60non-cirrhotic cases which also requested to satisfy the above conditions were randomly selected and comprised the control group. The first step was to compare the signs of chest CT between experimental group and control group, and the comparative contents included:l,intrapulmonary artery dilatation to subpleural;2,small nodular;3,reticular opacities;4,average density in right lung bottom(expressed by CT hounsfieldunit).The second step was to divide the experimental group into three groups according to Child classification (Child A group, Child B group and Child C group),and then to compare the above four kinds of CT features among the three groups. The third step was to divide the experimental group into two groups according to different ages.(≤55years old group and>55group),to compare the CT features.Results:The cirrhosis and non-cirrhotic groups in all four CT features had significant difference(p<0.05).The three groups of Child classification had no statistical significance in the above1～3th CT features, while there was statistic significance between Child C group and Child A group in the4th CT feature, this may be the result of the little cases from Child C group. There were no significant difference in the all of CT features between the different age groups.Conclusion:Cirrhosis of the liver lesions may affect lung peripheral vascular through certain channels,but the change and degree of cirrhosis showed no obvious correlation.And the study illustrated the peripheral pulmonary vascular dilatation of liver cirrhosis was not related to age.