The Prognosis Analysis of Liver Cirrhosis with Acute Variceal Bleeding and Validation of Current Prognostic Models: A Large Scale Retrospective Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: Acute variceal bleeding is a major cause of death in liver cirrhosis. This large scale retrospective cohort study aims to analyze the prognosis of patients with cirrhosis and acute variceal bleeding and to validate the current prognostic models. METHODS: Patients with cirrhosis and acute variceal bleeding were enrolled from Jan 2019 to March 2020. The independent prognostic factors for in-hospital death were identified by logistic regression analyses. Area under curves (AUCs) was compared among Child-Pugh, cirrhosis acute gastrointestinal bleeding (CAGIB) score, and model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) scores. RESULTS: Overall, 379 patients with liver cirrhosis and acute variceal bleeding were consecutively evaluated. The majority of the patients were males (59.1%) and the mean age of all patients were 53.7 ± 1.3 years (range 14-89). Hepatitis B virus (HBV) was the most common underlying cause of liver cirrhosis (54.1%). 72 (19%) patients had hepatocellular carcinoma. Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that age, HCC, WBC, total serum bilirubin, serum creatinine, and ALT were independently associated with in-hospital death. And the odds ratios (ORs) for in-hospital death were 1.066 (95% CI 1.017-1.118, P = 0.008), 7.19 (95% CI 2.077-24.893, P = 0.001), 1.123 (95% CI 1.051-1.201, P = 0.001), 1.014 (95% CI 1.005-1.023, P = 0.003), 1.012 (95% CI 1.004-1.021, P = 0.006), and 1.005 (95% CI 1.000-1.009, P = 0.036), respectively. In the whole cohort with HCC patients, the AUCs of Child-Pugh, CAGIB, MELD and NLR scores were 0.842 (95% CI 0.801-0.878), 0.840 (95% CI 0.799-0.876), 0.798 (95% CI 0.754-0.838), and 0.688 (95% CI 0.639-0.735), respectively. The differences were statistically significant between Child-Pugh and NLR scores (P = 0.0118), and between CAGIB and NLR scores (P = 0.0354). CONCLUSION: Child-Pugh and CAGIB scores showed better predictive performance for prognosis of patients with cirrhosis and acute variceal bleeding than NLR scores.