background all conditions that interfere with blood flow at any level within the portal system can lead to portal hypertension. for better management of this disorder, it is important to determine the underlying cause. in previ­ous studies, extra-hepatic disorders have been reported as the main cause of portal hypertension in children. in this study, we investigate the under­lying causes of por...

Ultrasonic Investigation of Hepatic Mechanical Properties: Quantifying Tissue Stiffness and Deformation With Increasing Portal Venous Pressure

BACKGROUND/AIMS Hepatic stellate cells (HSC) are involved in the pathogenesis of liver fibrosis; although ET-1 is increased in cirrhosis, its pathophysiological role in fibrogenesis and portal hypertension remains controversial. The aim of this study was to investigate splanchnic hemodynamics and to correlate them with changes in ET-1 expression and HSC activation in bile duct ligated (BDL) rat...

Increased nitric oxide (NO) is the main factor leading to the hyperdynamic circulation associated with advanced portal hypertension (PHT), but the initial mechanisms and the magnitude of increase in portal pressure required to trigger NO production are not known. We addressed these issues by studying systemic and splanchnic hemodynamics and endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) and VEGF expression in ...

A 39-y-old man, who had an episode of pancreatic bleeding due to chronic pancreatitis, received total pancreatectomy with islet autotransplantation (TP with IAT). Intraoperative ultrasound (US) examination was done to detect transplanted islets and evaluate the quality of US imaging. Islet isolation from the resected total pancreas was performed and approximately 230,000 islet equivalents (IE...