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Objective To investigate the efficacy and safety of the Fuzheng Huayu Tablet (扶正化瘀片, FZHYT), which is used to reinforce qi and resolve stasis in patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis (PHC).

Objective. To compare and analyze the relevance and applied value of chronic liver disease questionnaire (CLDQ) and Traditional Chinese Medicine liver disease questionnaire (TCMLDQ) in patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis.Methods. The data of 146 patients' scales of CLDQ and TCMLDQ which based on the characteristics of chinese medical symptoms were collected. We made comparative analysis of the relationship between these two scales by the linear regression model and canonical correlation method and evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of two scales about its items setting and dimension definition.Result. There is a negative correlation in total scores between the two scales and the linear regression equation:CLDQ=239.38−1.232TCMLDQ. The further canonical correlation analysis was used to analyze the two extracted canonical correlative variables with significances (P<0.05), and the results showed that the overall negative correlation between the two scales mainly came from contributions of both the four dimensions of TCMLDQ (CS, GSYX, GYPX, and OS) and the five dimensions of CLDQ (AS, FA, SS, AC, and EF).Conclusion. These two scales have good consistency in the evaluation of severity and life quality of liver cirrhosis patients, so we suggested that TCMLDQ can be used to evaluate the severity and life quality of patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis.

The therapeutic effectiveness of nutritional support in the treatment of severe chronic hepatitis and posthepatitic cirrhosis was evaluated. 143 patients with severe chronic hepatitis and 83 with posthepatitic cirrhosis were evaluated with SGA for assessing the nutritional status before the treatment. Patients with severe chronic hepatitis were divided into three groups: group A subject to enteral nutrition (EN) and parenteral nutrition (PN), group B subject to comprehensive treatment (CT)+PN; group C subject to CT+EN. The patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis were divided into two groups: group D receiving CT and group E receiving CT+PN+EN. The function of liver and kidney and nutritional status were monitored to assess the therapy in 6 weeks. The results showed before treatment, over 90 % patients had moderate to severe malnutrition. After nutritional support, the liver function (ALT, T-bil) and nutritional status (TP, TC) in group A was improved significantly as compared with that in groups B and C (P0.05). Compared with group D, the values of TP and Alb were increased significantly in group E (P0.05), but the levels of ALT, AST and T-bil had no obvious change. It was suggested that most patients with severe chronic hepatitis or posthepatitic cirrhosis had malnutrition to varying degrees. The nutritional support treatment could obviously improve the nutritional status of these patients, and was helpful to ameliorate the liver function of the patients with severe chronic hepatitis. Among the methods of nutritional support treatment, PN combined with EN had the best effectiveness.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine whether and how the diameter of the vein that gives rise to the inflowing vein of the esophageal and gastric fundic varices secondary to posthepatitic cirrhosis, as measured with multidetector-row computed tomography, could predict the varices and their patterns. METHODS: A total of 106 patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis underwent multidetector-row computed tomography. Patients with and without esophageal and gastric fundic varices were enrolled in Group 1 and Group 2, respectively. Group 1 was composed of Subgroup A, consisting of patients with varices, and Subgroup B consisted of patients with varices in combination with portal vein-inferior vena cava shunts. The diameters of the originating veins of veins entering the varices were reviewed and statistically analyzed. RESULTS: The originating veins were the portal vein in 8% (6/75) of patients, the splenic vein in 65.3% (49/75) of patients, and both the portal and splenic veins in 26.7% (20/75) of patients. The splenic vein diameter in Group 1 was larger than that in Group 2, whereas no differences in portal vein diameters were found between groups. In Group 1, the splenic vein diameter in Subgroup A was larger than that in Subgroup B. A cut-off splenic vein diameter of 8.5 mm achieved a sensitivity of 83.3% and specificity of 58.1% for predicting the varices. For discrimination of the varices in combination with and without portal vein-inferior vena cava shunts, a cut-off diameter of 9.5 mm achieved a sensitivity of 66.7% and specificity of 60.0%. CONCLUSION: The diameter of the splenic vein can be used to predict esophageal and gastric fundic varices and their patterns.

There is growing evidence that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) plays an important role in the diagnosis and therapy of diseases. However, it is difficult to be analyzed and understood by modern science, which seriously block its development. So there is an urgent need to explore an automatic diagnosis system of traditional Chinese medicine. This paper analyzes the proper of traditional Chinese medicine data and some applications of modern technologies for traditional Chinese medicine. This paper incorporates Rough Sets theory and artificial neural networks into the framework of TCM and designs an automatic differentiation system for TCM, named ASDSTCM. Experiments on posthepatitic cirrhosis TCM dataset indicate its effectiveness and robustness.

Syndrome differentiation is an important topic in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).Decision tree, one of the data mining algorithms developed, is a method to induce rules from data. In this paper, decision tree is applied to extract syndrome differentiation rules from 293 cases related to liver and kidney yin deficiency, damp-heat smoldering and Stasis and heat smoldering syndrome. Thus the decision tree classification model is obtained and some important factors are selected to three mainly syndromes of posthepatitic cirrhosis; corresponding syndrome differentiation rules are induced from the model. The classification accuracies are 79.86%, 80.5% and 82% respectively. The experiment results show that the decision method is likely a promising method to extract diagnostic rules from patient records of Chinese medicine and could be expected to be useful in the practice of traditional Chinese medicine.

Objective: To explore the significance of the combination of factor analysis and systematic cluster analysis in classification of trad itional Chinese medical syndromes in patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis, and to provide a scientific basis for the criterion of the classification. Methods: We designed a clinical questionnaire according to the clinic al characteristics and the demands of traditional Chinese medical information collection for patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis. By means of clinical ep idemiological research, with the four diagnosis methods for clinical information collection of traditional Chinese medicine, symptoms, physical signs, tongue co nditions and pulse conditions in 310 patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis were collected, and the characteristics of traditional Chinese medical syndromes in these patients were explored with statistical methods, such as factor analysi s, varimax and systematic cluster analysis. Results: Analyzed by fac tor analysis and systematic cluster analysis with SPSS 11.0, the traditional Chi nese medical syndromes in 287 of the 310 cases (92.58%) of posthepatitic cirrhos is could be classified. The syndromes could be divided into 7 categories, wh ich were internal accumulation of damp-heat (55 cases), insufficiency of the sp leen with overabundance of dampness (74 cases), accumulation of blood stasis plu s deficiency of liver-yin and kidney-yin (73 cases), accumulation of blood sta sis plus deficiency of both blood and qi (40 cases), deficiency of both bloo d and qi (16 cases), deficiency of yin and blood heat (6 cases) and stagnation o f the liver-qi and deficiency of the spleen (23 cases). The traditional Chi nese medical syndromes in the other 23 cases could not be classified. Conclusions: The clinical information collected with the four diagnostic methods of traditional Chinese medicine can be classified into different cat egories with the factor analysis and systematic cluster analysis. The factor analysis and systematic cluster analysis can reveal the characteristics and r egularity of traditional Chinese medical syndromes in patients with posthepati tic cirrhosis in a way, and have value in researching the syndromes of t raditional Chinese medicine.

This study analyzes the course of 62 patients aged over 60 years (i.e., 7% of all recipients) which were liver transplanted over the last 10 years. The data show that the results of transplantation in patients with malignant tumors (n = 25) are unfavorable (20% 5-year survival), while good results could be obtained in patients with benign indications (n = 37), including mainly posthepatitic cirrhosis, but also three fulminant liver failures (75% 5-year survival). Causes of death were mainly septic complications in the early phase and tumor recurrence in patients with malignant disease.

Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) was measured in 19 patients with Child A liver cirrhosis by comparing the endogenous creatinine clearance with inulin clearance. Inulin clearance averaged 90 +/- 4.4 ml/min x 1.73 m2, while creatinine clearance averaged 122 +/- 7 ml/min x 1.73 m2 (p < 0.001). The overestimation of GFR by creatinine was present in 18 of 19 patients and was inversely correlated with inulin clearance (r = -0.452, p < 0.04). The data point to the unsuitability of creatinine as a marker of filtration in early posthepatitic cirrhosis (Child A).

In a previous report, we developed methods by which to quantify various patterns of cirrhosis. A set of parameters were used: (i) the mean nodular radius; (ii) the coarseness; (iii) the mean septal thickness; and (iv) the degree of nodular separation. This was applied to 70 cirrhotic livers in an attempt to establish a reproducible classification, and the data were subjected to four-dimensional cluster analysis (Ward method) using a mainframe computer. Five clusters appeared: cluster A, fine nodules, thin septa; cluster B, coarse nodules, relatively thin septa; cluster C, fine nodules, thick septa; cluster D, extremely coarse nodules; and cluster E, coarse nodules, thin septa and incomplete nodulation. Of these, cluster A was considered to correspond to the nutritional type of Gall, cluster B to posthepatitic type (Nagayo's Type B), cluster C to postnecrotic type (Nagayo's Type A) and cluster E to the subtype of posthepatitic cirrhosis with incomplete nodulation (Miyake's Type BI). Cluster D comprised cases with extremely coarsened nodules. The reproducibility of this clustering was fully ensured by linear discriminant analysis. Another discriminant analysis, the canonical, allowed us to visualize the separation of clusters in a two-dimensional (2-D) scatter diagram. We thus managed to establish a most adequate classification from a geometric and statistical point of view.

Manganese, copper, and zinc concentrations were determined in serum and packed blood cells of normal controls, patients with acute and chronic (persistent or aggressive) hepatitis, and cases of postnecrotic cirrhosis. During the active phase of acute hepatitis, serum manganese concentrations are invariably increased; the difference between the mean value and the normal is highly significant, P < 0.001. The mean serum copper is also significantly increased (P < 0.01). The concentrations become normal during the subsiding phase. In chronic aggressive hepatitis and posthepatitic cirrhosis, the mean serum manganese concentration is increased, P < 0.001, whereas the serum zinc concentration is frequently decreased. There is a highly significant (P < 0.001) positive correlation between serum manganese concentration and the activity in serum of aminotransferases, in subjects with acute or chronic hepatitis or postnecrotic cirrhosis.

The prevalence rate of primary carcinoma of the liver was 2.6% in Nagasaki, Japan and 0.9% in Hiroshima. No relationship between primary carcinoma of the liver and ionizing radiation was demonstrated. Posthepatitic cirrhosis was the type of cirrhosis most commonly found in association with a hepatoma. The threefold difference between these cities in the prevalence rate of carcinoma of the liver is in part explained by the greater tendency of cirrhosis in Nagasaki to be associated with a hepatoma.

Summary A case is reported of posthepatitic cirrhosis in which, for poorly understood reasons, the clinical and pathologic characteristics of hemochromatosis developed within 3 1/2 years of a portacaval anastomosis. Additional experience with 3 other cases is briefly presented.

Cirrhotic and precirrhotic livers consist of three-dimensional parenchymal networks. Topological analysis has been carried out using the total connectivity number p1 on the livers from 6 autopsy cases of chronic liver diseases of different types. The total p1 amounts to 6,100,000 in chronic hepatitis of periportal type and 6,350,000 in portal cirrhosis, but to only 100,000 in posthepatitic cirrhosis of coarse-nodular type. In view of the similarity of values for p1 in chronic hepatitis and portal cirrhosis, the former is considered to give rise to the latter by continuous change in structure or through “piecemeal” progression of the periportal lesion. Development of posthepatitic cirrhosis from chronic hepatitis is possible only through a substantial reduction in p1, which is brought about by parenchymal necrosis sufficient in extent to cause multiple disconnection of the network.

IT has long been recognized that parenchymal liver disease clinically can simulate obstruction of extrahepatic biliary radicles.1 , 2 Clinical and laboratory manifestations of obstruction are occasionally encountered in postnecrotic and Laennec's cirrhosis,3 hemochromatosis,4 viral5 6 7 and toxic hepatitis,8 9 10 11 12 granulomas,13 lymphoma,13 metastatic carcinoma13 , 14 and amyloidosis.13 In addition, some patients with normal extrahepatic bile ducts and clinical and laboratory evidence of obstructive jaundice have been classified as having a distinctive clinicopathological entity15 16 17 18 19 20 21 that is variously termed "primary biliary cirrhosis,"15 "cholangiolitic cirrhosis,"22 "pericholangiolitic biliary cirrhosis,"16 "chronic obliterating cholangitis,"23 "hypertrophic cirrhosis of Hanot"24 and "xanthomatous biliary cirrhosis."25 The characteristic clinical features of this condition include chronic . . .