Takemichi Inoue

On portal hypertension and pancytopenia observable in the course of virus hepatitis

ConclusionIt is true that there are cases having complication of splenomegaly and portal hypertension due to intra-hepatic pre-sinusoidal block after the onset of infectious hepatitis, but in the observation over a long period the cases with complication of pancytopenia prove to be only two cases out of ten. Moreover, in the three cases out of four, pancytopenia occurred after the distortion of lobular architecture.From these findings it would be most rational to assume that portal hypertension, splenomegaly and pancytopenia observable after virus hepatitis are simply one series of symptoms of changes occurring in the liver, spleen, portal venous system and bone marrow in the course of progress to liver cirrhosis. In addition, the fact that in the examinations of 80 cases of liver cirrhosis the cases showing pancytopenia prove to be 31% and that the incidence of such a complication increases with advance in age indirectly supports our assumption.