The Liver Diseases Program of the Hospital Santa Casa de Misericórdia do Pará--infrastructure and clinical epidemiology in 10 years of attendance

The Liver Diseases Program of the Hospital Santa Casa de Misericordia do Pará was create because of the need to attend patients with liver diseases of the Amazônia area, taking as priority to attend with quality, diagnosis of aetiologies, clinical following and specific treatment. This study aim to describe dates related to epidemiology, aetiologics agents and histopathologic analysis. One thousand sixty nine patients were evaluated through medical, laboratory, endoscopic, ultrasound or computerized tomography and histopathologic examination. Nine hundred thirty five (63.6%) patients within 1469 patients were diagnose as chronic liver disease. The average age was 50 year, 666 (71.2%) were male, and the most patients lived in Belem, State of Pará. The aetiologic agents most prevail were alcoholism (53.7%) and viral hepatitis (39.1%). Hepatic biopsy were done in 403 (43.1%) within the 935 patients and the results showed chronic hepatitis (34%) and chirrosis (34%). In summary the chronic liver disease in the amazon region is more prevail in male than female, the alcoholism is the principal aetiologie, and the most of these cases were diagnose in the severe phase.