Abstract
ICG Rmax and various liver function tests were measured in 182 patients, including 55 with liver cirrhosis, 66 with chronic hepatitis, 14 with primary hepatoma, 31 with alcoholic liver injury and 16 with fatty liver. ICG Rmax revealed a close correlation with BSP and liver function tests which reflect the degree of protein synthesis in the liver. ICG Rmax and BSP showed similar changes in chronic liver diseases, however, ICG Rmax was more sensitive to evaluate the precise pathophysiological status and the prognosis in liver cirrhosis than BSP.
Liver function tests which reflect protein synthesis in the liver showed high incidences of abnormal values only in liver cirrhosis and primary hepatoma, and incidences of abnormality in the other chronic liver diseases were significantly lower than that of ICG Rmax. Distinct discrepancies between ICG Rmax and those tests were found, suggesting that these tests reflected one aspect of hepatic pathophysiology which could not be evaluated by ICG Rmax.
These results suggested that ICG Rmax reflected most sensitively the changes in the total functioning cell mass, and that more precise pathophysiological status in liver diseases could be evaluated by the combination with ICG Rmax and liver function tests reflecting hepatic protein systhesis.
