초음파검사로 진단된 지방간 정도의 임상적 의의

Abstract

Purpose: Fatty liver is one of the most commonly found disease by abdominal ultrasonography. The status of fatty liver is classified into mild, moderate and severe degrees. This study was conducted to investigate the clinical significance of fatty liver using ultrasonography. Materials and methods: Test set consisted of 2,185 patients who visited D healthcare center in Daejeon to receive an abdominal ultrasonic test from January to December 2007. Out of the 2185 patients, 524 patients was diagnosed as fatty liver(290 male and 234 female patients). They were divided into three groups, group I for mild degree, II for moderate degree, and III for severe degree, depending on the echo of liver parenchyma, the sound attenuation, and the visibility of intrahepatic blood vessels and diaphragm. Then the correlation of obesity indices, liver function tests and metabolic syndrome was analyzed for males and females separately. Results: As for the degree of fatty liver, 350 cases(66.8%) were classified as group I, 153 cases(29.2%) as group II, and 21 cases(4.1%) as group III. In addition, severe degree of fatty liver was more frequently found in males than in females. The mean ages of three groups for males were 46.1, 44.5, and 39.1, and those for females were 48.8, 50.2, 52.4, respectively. Males with lower mean ages have severe degree of fatty liver while females with higher mean ages have the same degree of fatty liver. Obesity indices, AST, ALT and metabolic syndrome was significantly increased for patients with more severely of fatty liver for both males and females. Conclusion: The results in this study show that the classification into three degrees of fatty liver in ultrasonography practice is helpful to treat and observe the progress of fatty liver. In addition, careful examination is required to measure the severity of fatty liver as well as detection of it. A standardized method to classify the degree of fatty liver is also needed for more objective measurement.