Abstract
Aim: We evaluated the usefulness of serum hyaluronic acid (HA) levels as a predictor of postoperative complications. Methods: Serum HA and α1-antitrypsin (AT) was measured perioperatively in 29 patients un-dergoing hepatic resection. Patients were divided into 2 groups, high-level group (HH group, n=14) and normal-level group (HN group, n=15), based on the preoperative serum HA. The change in these two groups was compared by considering gastric resection group (GX group, n=10) as contrast. Furthermore, changes were compared between with and without postoperative complications. Results: Preoperative serum HA correlated significantly with liver function. Moreover, in the histological degree of hepatic fibrosis, the signifi-cant difference was showed between HH group and HN group (p<0.01).Postoperative complications oc-curred in 8 patients from the SIRS case of HH group. Pre-and postoperative serum HA was significantlyhigher in patients with postoperative complications than in those without (p<0.05).Patients with postopera-tive complications had significantly lower serum AT after POD 3, compared to those without complications (p<0.05).Preoperative serum HA correlated well with serum AT on POD 3. Conclusions: The function of sinusoidal endothelial cells is falling at the patient with preoperative high serum HA level. And postoperative production of AT is falling at such a patient. Furthermore, it was possible that it was easy to develop from SIRS to the postoperative complications at such a patient. Consequently, an occurrence of postoperative comp-lications could be predicted by the perioperative serum HA levels.
