Measuring liver and spleen by ultrasonography.

Understanding and defining the normal is usually the most difficult part of labeling something as abnormal. The morphological characterization of liver and spleen is one of the many parameters that go into detecting liver disorders and systemic infectious, inflammatory and malignant pathologies. Invariably the complete characterization of the disease process may need morphological assessment of other anatomical structures and laboratory reports. However, there are many conditions where organomegaly may be the only feature on ultrasonography like splenomegaly in malaria, kala-azar and hepatomegaly in many metabolic conditions like glycogen storage disease, besides infections. On the contrary, clinically palpable liver and spleen may not be pathological. Pushed down liver and spleen due to lung or subdiaphragmatic pathology, visceroptosis and palpable spleen in 10% to 15% of normal children are a few examples of palpable liver and spleen without any clinical significance(1).