TITLE:
A Case Report of Hepatopulmonary Syndrome
AUTHORS:
Liqiu Wu, Fan Su, Muchao Huang
KEYWORDS:
Hepatopulmonary Syndrome, Orthostatic Hypoxia, Intrapulmonary Vascular Dilatation, Orthotopic Liver Transplantation
JOURNAL NAME:
Case Reports in Clinical Medicine,
Vol.4 No.9,
September
15,
2015
ABSTRACT: Hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) is a severe complication of end-stage hepatic disease. However, the majority of HPS patients present with non-specific clinical manifestations and imaging features. They are constantly misdiagnosed as interstitial pneumonia, pulmonary infection or heart failure and appropriate treatment is thus delayed. In this report, clinical manifestations, diagnosis and treatment of one case of HPS were retrospectively analyzed and literature review was conducted. When the heapatic failure liver disease patients present with hypoxemia, pulmonary angiography, contrast echocardiography for right-sided heart (contrast enhanced echocardiogram) and lung perfusion scan (99mTc-MAA) should be done to exclude HPS. Orthotopic liver transplantation serves as the unique effective therapy of HPS.