Understanding the mutual relationship between the liver and the heart is important for both hepatologists and cardiologists. Hepato�cardiac diseases can be classified into heart diseases affecting the liver, liver diseases affecting the heart, and conditions affecting the heart and the liver at the same time. �ifferential diagnoses of liver injury are extremely important in a cardiologist's clinical practice calling for collaboration between cardiologists and hepatologists due to the many other diseases that can affect the liver and mimic haemodynamic injury. Acute and chronic heart failure may lead to acute ischemic hepatitis or chronic conges� tive hepatopathy. Treatment in these cases should be directed to the primary heart disease. In patients with advanced liver disease, cirrhotic cardiomyopathy may develop including hemodynamic changes, diastolic and systolic dysfunctions, reduced cardiac performance and electrophysiological abnormalities. Cardiac evaluation is important for patients with liver diseases especially before and after liver transplantation. Liver transplanta� tion may lead to the improvement of all cardiac chang� es and the reversal of cirrhotic cardiomyopathy. There are systemic diseases that may affect both the liver and the heart concomitantly including congenital, metabolic and inflammatory diseases as well as alcoholism. This review highlights these hepatocardiac diseases

Barrett's esophagus is the strongest risk for esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). Metaplasia in patients with BE may progress to dysplasia and then invasive carcinoma. Well-defined diagnostic, progressive, predictive, and prognostic biomarkers are needed to identify the presence of the disease, estimate the risk of malignant transformation, and predict the therapeutic outcome and survival of EAC patients. There are many predictive and prognostic markers that lack substantial validation, and do not allow stratification of patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease in clinical practice for outcome and effectiveness of therapy. In this short review we summarize the current knowledge regarding possible biomarkers, focusing on the pathophysiologic mechanisms to improve prognostic and therapeutic approaches.

Background: variceal bleeding (VB) is a medical emergency. Endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) performed quickly is beneficial. Evenafter EVL, somatostatin is still utilized in the VB band for 2–5 days. The advantage of continuing somatostatin after EVL is uncertainsince EVL is the main method for achieving hemostasis.Aim and objectives: to determine if continuing somatostatin after EVL is effective in reducing mortality and rebleeding.Subjects and methods: In this study, 75 patients with variceal bleeding were divided into two treatment groups (TG); TG2 & TG5,which received somatostatin (250 micrograme bolus + a continuous infusion of 500 micrograme/h) for two days and five days,respectively, and one control group (TG0), which received 0.9 percent normal saline and was monitored for six weeks.Result: There were a total of 8 rebleeds; they happened more often in the TG0 (4%) and TG2 (2.6%) and TG5 (4%) groups, albeit notstatistically significantly (P=0.751). The treatment group substantially experienced more adverse drug reactions (ADRs) than the controlgroup (P=0.003). Diarrhoea was the most frequent ADR, followed by hyperglycemia and bradycardia, with 14 patients mentioning twoor more ADR. In comparison to the control group, ADR was considerably greater in the treatment groups. As the days of somatostatinmedication increased, the length of the hospital stay rose considerably (P=0.041).Conclusion: We conclude that in acute VB, there is no justification for continuing somatostatin after EVL since it had no beneficialeffect on preventing rebleeding and, instead, increased the risk of ADR and length of hospital stay.

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