Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 28, 2018; 24(12): 1285-1298
Published online Mar 28, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i12.1285
Review article: Update on current and emergent data on hepatopulmonary syndrome
Stergios Soulaidopoulos, Evangelos Cholongitas, George Giannakoulas, Maria Vlachou, Ioannis Goulis
Stergios Soulaidopoulos, Ioannis Goulis, Fourth Department of Internal Medicine, Hippokration General Hospital, Medical School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54642, Greece
Evangelos Cholongitas, First Department of Internal Medicine, Laiko General Hospital, Medical School of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens 11527, Greece
George Giannakoulas, Maria Vlachou, Department of Cardiology, AHEPA University Hospital, Medical School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54621, Greece
Author contributions: Cholongitas E conceived of and designed the study; Soulaidopoulos S, Vlachou M and Giannakoulas G finished the data acquisition; Soulaidopoulos S and Vlachou M performed the data analysis and interpretation; Soulaidopoulos S and Cholongitas E drafted the manuscript; Goulis I, Cholongitas E, and Giannakoulas G made critical revision of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no financial or other conflicts of interest related to the submitted manuscript to declare.
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: Evangelos Cholongitas, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, First Department of Internal Medicine, Medical School of National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Laiko General Hospital, Agiou Thoma 17, Athens 11527, Greece. cholongitas@yahoo.gr
Telephone: +30-6936-378903 Fax: +30-2310-992940
Received: January 9, 2018
Peer-review started: January 10, 2018
First decision: February 5, 2018
Revised: February 18, 2018
Accepted: March 7, 2018
Article in press: March 7, 2018
Published online: March 28, 2018
Core Tip

Core tip: Hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) constitutes a relatively frequent complication of end-stage liver disease, characterized by impairment of arterial oxygenation. The only effective treatment is liver transplantation, improving hypoxemia. While there are controversial data regarding HPS prognosis before and after liver transplantation, the question remains whether HPS constitutes an independent factor of morbidity, providing HPS patients priority for liver transplantation. Furthermore, possible associations with myocardial function, which could support the utility of echocardiographical parameters as markers of HPS, remain yet to be established.