Background: Liver cirrhosis is still a common disease in our country, and the occurrence of cardiac function abnormalities in cirrhotic patients has gained recent attention although clinical symptoms of cardiac impairment at rest are often not apparent.
Objective: This work was done to study cardiac function in Egyptian patients with non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis with and without ascites by using Doppler echocardiography.
Patients and Methods: This study included 30 cirrhotic patients classified into two groups; 15 patients with no ascites (Non Ascitic group), and 15 patients with moderate to sever ascites at the time of the study (Ascitic group). The study also included 10 age and sex matched healthy volunteers served as a control group.
All patients and controls were subjected to detailed history taking, careful clinical examination, chest X-ray, resting ECG, laboratory investigations, abdominal ultrasonography, and echo Doppler study.
Results: This study showed that, in presence of ascites, the left ventricular diameters and volumes are significantly decreased as compared to the non ascitic patients (p |
