Hematological Disorders in Patients with Liver Viral Cirrhosis

Elza Vashakidze, Irina Kiladze

Department of Infectious Diseases, Tbilisi State Medical University, Georgia

Liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma are the most frequent and severe complication of chronic C hepatitis. Results of recent researches indicated that HCV persists and replicates not only in hepatic tissue, but in the other organs, too. In patients with chronic C hepatitis and cirrhosis extrahepatocellular areas of virus persistence and replication and the extrahepatocytal manifestation of the disease complicates the hepatitis and worsens the outcome. The goal of our investigation was to determine hematological disorders during chronic HCV and HCV+HBC hepatitis, to find correlation between activity of chronic hepatitis, stage of cirrhosis and degree of hematological disorders. We have studied patients with chronic C and B+C hepatitis (36 persons) and 77 HCV-infected persons on the stage of cirrhosis. Out of all investigated persons 14 patients had low activity hepatitis, 22 persons suffered from high activity of infectious process. From cirrhotic patients 22 had A stage of pathological process, 25 persons had B stage and 30 persons - C stage. The erythrocytes morphology was investigated through light microscope. The osmotic resistance of erythrocytes was investigated using the method of Ianovski (modification of Ribiera); the thrombocytes' ability to adhe and aggregate was studied through the method of Rite. The absolute number of thrombocytes was counted by means of phase-contras microscope. RESULT: During chronic HCV hepatitis in line with development of cirrhosis hematological disorders became more serious. This was particularly evident at the C stage of cirrhosis. CONCLUSION: With the development of viral liver cirrhosis the patients display severe hematological disorders, which are directly correlated with the liver damage degree.

Keywords:  viral hepatitis, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, hypersplenism, extrahepatocytal manifestation, peripheral blood, atypical erythrocytes, thrombocytes, megakaryocytopoiesis, hemopoiesis, bone marrow