Abstract
(Objective) The most frequently observed abnormality in abdominal ultrasonography is fatty liver. However, it is difficult to conduct thorough examination in all patients with fatty liver. In recent years, fat accumulation in the pancreas has attracted attention as a risk factor of arteriosclerotic disease. In this study, we focused on the degree of fat accumulation in the pancreas for the purpose of extracting fatty livers with a greater risk of arteriosclerosis.
(Subjective and Methods) One hundred and twenty one patients with fatty liver were investigated. As an index to show the degree of fat accumulation in the pancreas, brightness was evaluated by histogram values and the difference in brightness between the pancreas and spleen was indicated as the “pancreas-spleen difference.”
(Results) In patients with fatty liver, receiver operating characteristic analysis (ROC) was performed for the pancreas-spleen difference with the presence or absence of concurrent metabolic syndrome as the outcome, and the pancreas-spleen difference cutoff value was set at 45. It resulted in moderate accuracy with sensitivity of 0.652, specificity of 0.702, and area under the curve (AUC) of 0.705. The patients in the group with a high pancreas-spleen difference had concurrent metabolic syndrome at a higher frequency and had higher values of visceral fat area, higher body weight, higher BMI and higher abdominal circumference, suggesting that it is a group of patients with fatty liver with a greater risk of arteriosclerosis.
(Conclusion) It was indicated that adding the pancreas-spleen difference to the ultrasonic screening test could extract types of fatty livers that have high affinity for metabolic syndrome.
