Clinical features of cirrhotic patients with different degrees of portal vein thrombosis and their clinical significance

Objective To investigate liver function and clinical features of portal hypertension complications in cirrhotic patients with different degrees of PVT, and to clarify the clinical significance of PVT.Methods A retrospective analysis was performed for 178 cirrhotic patients with PVT who were admitted to Beijing You An Hospital, Capital Medical University, from January 2014 to June 2015, and according to the severity of thrombosis, they were divided into single thrombosis group (109 patients) and multiple thrombosis group (69 patients) .The etiology, clinical manifestation, laboratory results, and gastroscopic findings were recorded.The t-test was used for comparison of normally distributed continuous data, the Wilcoxon rank sum test was used for comparison of non-normally distributed continuous data between groups, and the chi-square test was used for comparison of categorical data between groups.Results Compared with the multiple thrombosis group, the single thrombosis group had a significantly lower proportion of patients with hepatitis B cirrhosis than the multiple thrombosis group (50.5% vs 71.0%, χ2=7.350, P=0.008) and a significantly higher proportion of patients with autoimmune cirrhosis (11.0% vs0, χ2=8.145, P=0.004) .Compared with the multiple thrombosis group, the single thrombosis group had significantly lower prothrombin time activity (63.58%±21.12% vs 71.84%±16.68%, t=-2.701, P=0.008) and significantly lower proportions of patients with severe esophageal varices (57.7% vs 81.1%, χ2=8.921, P=0.012) and red-color sign of esophageal varices (64.1% vs 86.8%, χ2=8.298, P=0.005) .Conclusion Multiple PVT does not influence patients' liver function, and patients with multiple PVT have marked esophageal varices compared with those with single PVT.