Effect of psoas muscle mass after endoscopic therapy for patients with esophageal varices

We aimed to investigate the impact of decrease of muscle mass on survival after eradication of esophageal varices (EVs) treated by endoscopic therapies as a primary prophylaxis in patients with liver cirrhosis (LC). In all, 177 LC individuals with EVs undergoing endoscopic therapies were analyzed. We retrospectively examined the impact of muscle mass decrease as determined by psoas muscle mass (PMM) at the third lumber on computed tomography (depletion of PMM [DPMM]) on survival as compared with serum sodium combined Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD-Na). In comparison of the effects of these parameters, we used time-dependent receiver-operating characteristics (ROC) analysis. We also investigated parameters related to overall survival in the univariate and multivariate analyses. This study included 116 males and 61 females with a median age of 66 years. The median follow-up periods were 2.7 years (range 0.1–9.6 years). In all, 110 patients (62.1%) had DPMM. The median MELD-Na score was 7.200 (range −3.451 to 30.558). The MELD-Na score in patients with DPMM (median 7.685) was significantly higher than that in patients without DPMM (median 6.235) (P = .0212). In the multivariate analysis, presence of hepatocellular carcinoma (P < .0001), presence of DPMM (P < .0001), and MELD-Na ≥7.2 (P = .0438) were revealed to be significant predictors related to overall survival. In time-dependent ROC analyses, all area under the ROCs for DPMM in each time point were higher than those for MELD-Na in the entire cohort and in patients without hepatocellular carcinoma at baseline (n = 133). In conclusion, for LC patients treated by endoscopic therapies for EVs, DPMM had stronger prognostic impact than MELD-Na.