[Diagnosis of varices in liver cirrhosis: duplex ultrasound versus gastroscopy].

This study assesses the usefulness of duplex sonography in the diagnosis of oesophageal varices. 32 patients with liver cirrhosis were studied by endoscopy and duplex sonography. There was an excellent correlation in the case of the medium-sized and large-sized varices. Only small varices could not be detected by duplex sonography. On the other hand, 3 large-sized paraoesophageal varices, which were not identified by endoscopy, were easily seen by duplex sonography. The sensitivity of duplex sonography was between 0.8 and 0.9, the accuracy between 0.93 and 0.96.