Original article—liver, pancreas, and biliary tractMuscle Wasting Is Associated With Mortality in Patients With Cirrhosis
Section snippets
Study Population
One hundred twelve patients with cirrhosis who were consecutively evaluated for liver transplant at the University of Alberta Hospital and who had a computed tomography (CT) scan at the third lumbar (L3) vertebrae were selected. In our center routine diagnostic CT scans are regularly done for diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) as well as for evaluation of biliary and vascular anatomy in all patients under consideration for liver transplantation.
Clinical and Laboratory Assessments
Data recovered from medical charts
Clinical and Biochemical Features of Patients With Cirrhosis
Seventy-eight patients were men (70%), and the mean age was 54 ± 1 years (median, 54 years; range, 28–71 years). Etiology of liver cirrhosis was hepatitis C virus (HCV) (29%), alcohol (22%), autoimmune liver disease (19%), HCV and alcohol (16%), and others (13%). The remaining clinical and biochemical features are shown in Table 1.
Lumbar Skeletal Muscle Index and Frequency of Sarcopenia in Patients With Cirrhosis
Mean L3 SMI was 51 ± 1 cm2/m2 (median, 50; range, 32–80). Sarcopenia was present in 45 patients (40%). In Figure 1 we compare 2 cirrhotic patients with identical body
Discussion
Our study indicates that sarcopenia is present in approximately 40% of patients with cirrhosis being evaluated for liver transplant, and sarcopenia constitutes a strong and independent predictive factor for mortality. This mortality risk is more than 2-fold higher in sarcopenic than nonsarcopenic patients. Moreover, sarcopenia does not correlate with degree of liver dysfunction evaluated with conventional scores such as Child–Pugh or MELD score and also does not correlate with other common
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Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.
Funding This study has been awarded a Clinical Research Award from the American College of Gastroenterology Institute (2011).