Abstract

ESPINOZA AVILA, María del Carmen  and  VALDIVIA ROLDAN, Mario. Eficacia diagnóstica de la albúmina en líquido ascítico. Rev. gastroenterol. Perú [online]. 2004, vol.24, n.2, pp.127-134. ISSN 1022-5129.

Albumin in ascitic fluid has been evaluated as a discriminative diagnosis test, based on an observation and retrospective study, comparing it to that of total ascitis protein and albumin gradient, which are the most clinically used tests nowadays. The study involved a total of 45 patients, predominantly women, averaging 54 years of age, who were diagnosed through laparoscopy in a public hospital. The evaluation included: 19 patients suffering transudate type ascitis (chronic liver disease, n = 18), 23 patients with exudates type ascitis (peritoneal carcinomatosis, n = 12, tuberculous peritonitis, n = 11), and patients with mixedascitis. Sensibility, specificity and predictive values were obtained from the analisys of the tests, and they were represented through the distribution of averages and ROC curves, showing every time that these tests can be used in clinical practice because they have comparable sensibility and specificity values. As a new discriminative test of transudates and exudates the albumin test in ascitis proved to have a sensibility comparable to that of the protein in ascitic fluid but discreetly lower to that of albumin gradient. However, the ascitis albumin showed a better relation between the sensibility and specificity in the area under the ROC curves. Based on this study, the usefulness of the concentration of albumin in ascitic fluid is highlighted as a new test to discriminate exudates from transudates, which has been reported by very few authors in writing. In addition, this study shows that the albumin gradient can also be applied in the discrimination of exudates and transudates with efficacy comparable to its use in the discrimination of ascitis with or without portal hypertension.

Keywords : ascitic fluid; transudate; exudate.

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