Relationship between ultrasound-measured spleen, liver and anthropometry of children living in a rural community in southwest Nigeria: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background

Ultrasonography is noninvasive, relatively inexpensive and useful for resource-poor settings. US spleen and liver sizes have been observed to differ among populations, so there is a need for reference values for different geographic populations.

Objective

To describe the sizes of the spleen and liver of children living in a rural community in southwest Nigeria and assess the relationship between these measurements and the children’s anthropometry.

Materials and methods

We conducted a community-based cross-sectional study among 358 apparently healthy children ages 1–14 years. We obtained the participants’ weights, heights, body mass index and body surface area. They underwent US imaging to obtain longitudinal measurements of their spleen and liver. We used independent t-test to compare means, and linear regression analysis to assess relationships between continuous data. The significance level was set as P < 0.05.

Results

There were more girls (181; 50.6%). Most children were ages 1–5 years (172; 48.0%). The body surface area had significantly strong positive relationships with US spleen size (r = 0.769; R² = 0.592; P < 0.0001) and US liver size (r = 0.819; R² = 0.671; P < 0.0001) but body mass index had weak positive relationships.

Conclusion

This study contributes to data on US spleen and liver sizes of Nigerian children. The findings buttress observations that body surface area strongly correlates with US spleen and liver measurements. It is recommended that more studies be conducted among Nigerian children to generate a robust pool of data that are useful for creating homogeneous formulae to ease interpretation of US measurements of these intraabdominal organs.