Reply to Comment on Sonographic Portal Vein Biometry among Apparently Healthy Children in Northeastern Nigeria.

Dear Editor,

Dr. Mahmood Dhahir Al-Mendalawi is right about his assertion on our research work published in January–March 2020 issue of the Journal of Medical Ultrasound,[1] which was aimed at determining the mean portal vein diameter, based on age, gender, and anthropometric indices among a cohort of apparently healthy Nigerian children aged 0–18 years. Previous studies both locally and internationally using a similar method reported similar findings,[23456] as shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Previous studies with the summary of their findings

Reference	Country	Population	Findings
Luntsi et al.[1]	Nigeria	Children	That portal vein diameter correlated positively with some anthropometric parameters among children in the studied population
Usman et al.[2]	Nigeria	Adults	That portal vein diameter correlated with age and showed significant difference between the two sexes and respiratory phases
Adeyekun and Tsebi[3]	Nigeria	Adults	That no significant correlation exists between portal vein diameter, age, gender, and body mass index
Luntsi et al.[4]	Nigeria	Adults	That portal vein diameter positively correlates with age and anthropometric variables
Bhattacharya et al.[5]	India	Adults	Established normal portal vein diameter which can be clinically useful among the studied population
Vocke et al.[6]	Germany	Children	That portal vein diameter as well as its intrahepatic branches related well to anthropometric parameters in the studied population
Ghosh et al.[7]	India	Children	That portal vein diameter in children strongly correlates with age and anthropometric variables such as height, weight, and chest circumference, with height being the strongest determinant, with no difference between both genders

We explicitly stated the few limitations we thought were necessary and in line with the scope of our study “that only the diameter of the portal vein was measured and not the portal vein flow velocity, that this was also a single-center study, and the findings were not specific as no other imaging modalities or laboratory investigations were used to confirm our findings.”[1]

We, however, agree with the author (s) that there are ethnic differences in terms of various organ sizes, thus the need for population-specific sonographic normative data of various organs to guide research and clinical practice.[89101112] However, racial[1314] and even geographical[1516] variations among others could as well be the confounding factor in the results. As such, this was not the focus of our study and such considerations were not put in place. We also believe that the author (s) will agree with us that no single study can answer all the questions that there is to answer. We appreciate the author (s) for their interest in our research work and hope that our little contribution will guide future research works.

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Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.