title: Hepatic portal venous gas on postmortem CT scan.
abstract: We report on two cases involving hepatic portal venous gas (HPVG) imaging by computed tomography (CT) scans performed shortly after death. One case involved a 9-month-old infant who died of heat stroke, while the other was a 28-year-old man who died of myocarditis. Although both of these two cases were remarkable distension of the gastrointestinal tract with gas, the autopsies were unable to uncover any clinical cause for HPVG, such as necrotic bowel, ulcerative colitis, intra-abdominal abscess, bowel obstruction, or gastric ulcer. The cause of HPVG in our case is not due to organic disease, but due to gastro-intestinal distention due to emergency management using bag-valve-masking or esophageal tracheal combitube, thereby differing from the mechanisms underlying so-called clinical HPVG.
authors.affiliation: Department of Legal Medicine, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Asahi 3-1-1, Matsumoto, Nagano 390-8621, Japan. asamura@sch.md.shinshu-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Hideki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Asamura
authors.forename: Makoto
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.forename: Kayoko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Takayanagi
authors.forename: Kanya
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kobayashi
authors.forename: Masao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ota
authors.forename: Hirofumi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fukushima
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005740:Gases; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011169:Portal Vein / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D011180:Postmortem Changes; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
chemical_list: D005740:Gases