Gastric Emptying Time in Patients with Liver Cirrhosis

Park, Gun Tae; Kim, Young Hoon; Cho, Hyun Seok; Kim, Jung Mee; Yoon, Young Sub; Kim, Jin Bae; Lee, Oh Young; Choi, Ho Soon; Lee, Min Ho; Choi, Yoon Young

Abstract

BACKGROUND/AIMS
Changes in gastric motility in patients with liver cirrhosis is not yet established in South Korea. In this study changes in gastric emptying time with attention to factors that effect this change in patients with liver cirrhosis were investigated.
METHODS
Fifteen patients with liver cirrhosis (11 males and 4 females) and 15 healthy controls (11 males and 4 females) were enrolled in this study. Gastric emptying time was measured by gastric scintigraphy using a dual-head gamma camera after ingestion of the mixture of 99mTc-labeled egg and fried rice (754Kcal). Data acquisition was performed for 120 minutes with 15 minutes interval and geometric mean and decay correction were calculated for gastric emptying time.
RESULTS
There were no differences in age and sex between the two groups. The half time of soild gastric emptying was 78.0+/-87.0 minutes and 70.2+/-2.8 minutes for liver cirrhosis and healthy control group, respectively (p>0.05). The level of serum cholesterol was statistically correlated with gastric emptying time (B=-0.165, p<0.01).
CONCLUSIONS
There was no significant difference in gastric emptying time between liver cirrhosis and healthy control group.