%0 Journal Article %T Assessment of portal venous index as a non-invasive method for diagnosing liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C %A Rocha %A Haroldo Luis Oliva Gomes %A Diniz %A Ang¨¦lica Lemos Debs %A Borges %A Val¨¦ria Ferreira de Almeida e %A Salom£¿o %A Frederico Chaves %J Arquivos de Gastroenterologia %D 2012 %I Instituto Brasileiro de Estudos e Pesquisas de Gastroenterologia - IBEPEGE %R 10.1590/S0004-28032012000100004 %X context: hepatitis c is an important cause of chronic liver disease worldwide. the grading of hepatic fibrosis in chronic hepatitis c is important for better clinical management. however, until now, liver biopsy is the only test accepted for this purpose, despite their contraindications and complications. new methods for non-invasive assessment of hepatic fibrosis are under investigation. one proposal is the doppler ultrasound, as a non-invasive, widely available and inexpensive. objective: to compare doppler parameters of portal vein in patients with chronic hepatitis c with a healthy control group and to correlate these parameters with fibrosis degree obtained by liver biopsy. methods: fifty patients with chronic hepatitis c submitted to liver biopsy and 44 healthy controls had doppler of the portal vein performed, with the calculation of the portal venous index. we conducted a comparison between the averages of the two groups of portal venous index. for the correlation between portal venous index and fibrosis was employed the spearman test. results: there was a difference between the average portal venous index between controls (0.33 ¡À 0.07) and patients (0.23 ¡À 0.09) with p<0.001. no difference was observed between the portal venous index in patients with chronic hepatitis c who have significant fibrosis or not. the correlation between the portal venous index and fibrosis degree was reverse and moderate (r =-0.448 p<0.001). the area under the roc curve was 78.4% (95% ci: 68.8% to 88%). the cutoff for the portal venous index was 0.28 with sensitivity of 73.5% and specificity of 71.1%. conclusion: the portal venous index was useful in distinguishing healthy patients from patients with chc. however, there was no significant difference in the quantification of degree of fibrosis. %K hepatitis c %K chronic %K liver cirrhosis %K portal vein %K ultrasonography %K ultrasonography. %U http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0004-28032012000100004&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en