Systemic vascular resistance in cirrhosis: a predictor of severity?

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate whether systemic vascular resistance (SVR) correlates with validated prospective scoring systems such as Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) and its modifications. METHODS: Patients with cirrhosis, who were admitted to hospital with decompensation (as defined by development of ascites, hepatic encephalopathy, and variceal bleeding) and underwent echocardiography were included in this study. Laboratory data required for computing MELD score, serum bilirubin, serum creatinine, international normalized ratio, and serum sodium were collected for every patient. We tabulated hemodynamic and echocardiography parameters that enabled calculation of SVR. We analyzed the correlation between SVR and each of the individual prognostic scores. RESULTS: A total of 771 patients with a diagnosis of decompensated cirrhosis were included in the study. Two hundred and sixty-two patients were found to have a low sodium level (<135 mEq/L) and 509 were found to have a normal sodium level (>135 mEq/L). In the patients with hyponatremia, we found statistically significant inverse correlations between SVR and validated liver severity models. However, these correlations were not seen in patients with normonatremia. CONCLUSION: We observed a statistically significant inverse correlation between SVR and all the validated liver disease severity models used in this study among patients with hyponatremia but not in those with normonatremia.