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Medical AI Inquiry: You was designed to assist in medical decision-making based on the provided user questions. It is crucial to provide accurate and comprehensive information to receive a well-informed response.  Labels: OBJECTIVE, METHODS, RESULTS. Meshes: Adult, Alcoholism, Area Under Curve, Collagen Type IV, Esophageal and Gastric Varices, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, ROC Curve, Reproducibility of Results, Sensitivity and Specificity, Ultrasonography.
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Is serum type IV collagen level predictive for esophageal varices in patients with severe alcoholic disease? Context: To determine factors predictive for esophageal varices in severe alcoholic disease (SAD). Abdominal ultrasonography (US) was performed on 444 patients suffering from alcoholism. Forty-four patients found to have splenomegaly and/ or withering of the right liver lobe were defined as those with SAD. SAD patients were examined by upper gastrointestinal (UGI) endoscopy for the presence of esophageal varices. The existence of esophageal varices was then related to clinical variables. Twenty-five patients (56.8%) had esophageal varices. A univariate analysis revealed a significant difference in age and type IV collagen levels between patients with and without esophageal varices. A logistic regression analysis identified type IV collagen as the only independent variable predictive for esophageal varices (P = 0.017). The area under the curve (AUC) for type IV collagen as determined by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) for predicting esophageal varices was 0.78.
assistant
This study suggests that the level of type IV collagen has a high diagnostic accuracy for the detection of esophageal varices in SAD. Final Decision: yes