Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 28, 2015; 21(20): 6117-6126
Published online May 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i20.6117
Contemporary concepts of the medical therapy of portal hypertension under liver cirrhosis
Dmitry Victorovich Garbuzenko
Dmitry Victorovich Garbuzenko, Department of Faculty Surgery, South Ural State Medical University, 454092 Chelyabinsk, Russia
Author contributions: Garbuzenko DV contributed to the conception and design; acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the article; final approval of the version; Garbuzenko DV solely wrote this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dmitry Victorovich Garbuzenko, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Faculty Surgery, South Ural State Medical University, Box 12317, Chelyabinsk 454080, Russia. garb@inbox.ru
Telephone: +8-909-7459826 Fax: +8-351-2687772
Received: January 29, 2015
Peer-review started: January 30, 2015
First decision: March 10, 2015
Revised: March 20, 2015
Accepted: April 16, 2015
Article in press: April 17, 2015
Published online: May 28, 2015
Abstract

Severe complications of liver cirrhosis are mostly related to portal hypertension. At the base of the pathogenesis of portal hypertension is the increase in hepatic vascular resistance to portal blood flow with subsequent development of hyperdynamic circulation, which, despite of the formation of collateral circulation, promotes progression of portal hypertension. An important role in its pathogenesis is played by the rearrangement of vascular bed and angiogenesis. As a result, strategic directions of the therapy of portal hypertension under liver cirrhosis include selectively decreasing hepatic vascular resistance with preserving or increasing portal blood flow, and correcting hyperdynamic circulation and pathological angiogenesis, while striving to reduce the hepatic venous pressure gradient to less than 12 mmHg or 20% of the baseline. Over the last years, substantial progress in understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms of hemodynamic disorders under liver cirrhosis has resulted in the development of new drugs for their correction. Although the majority of them have so far been investigated only in animal experiments, as well as at the molecular and cellular level, it might be expected that the introduction of the new methods in clinical practice will increase the efficacy of the conservative approach to the prophylaxis and treatment of portal hypertension complications. The purpose of the review is to describe the known methods of portal hypertension pharmacotherapy and discuss the drugs that may affect the basic pathogenetic mechanisms of its development.

Keywords: Liver cirrhosis, Portal hypertension, Pathogenesis, Medical therapy

Core tip: The purpose of the review is to describe the known methods of portal hypertension pharmacotherapy and discuss the drugs that may affect the basic pathogenetic mechanisms of its development.