Effect of medications after cardiac surgery on long-term outcomes in patients with cirrhosis

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of beta-blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) after cardiac surgery in the liver cirrhosis (LC) patients. We conducted a population-based cohort study using data from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) from 2001 to 2013. The outcomes of interest included all-cause mortality, major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) and liver and renal outcomes. Among 1470 LC patients, 35.6% (n = 524) received beta-blockers and 33.4% (n = 491) were prescribed ACEIs and/or ARBs after cardiac surgery. The risk of negative liver outcomes was significantly lower in the ARB group compared with the ACEI group (9.6% vs 22.7%, hazard ratio [HR] 0.50, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.31–0.83). Furthermore, the risk of MACCE (44.2% vs 54.7%, HR 0.79, 95% CI 0.65–0.96), all-cause mortality (35.3% vs 46.4%, HR 0.74, 95% CI 0.60–0.92), composite liver outcomes (9.6% vs 16.5%, HR 0.56, 95% CI 0.38–0.85) and hepatic encephalopathy (2.7% vs 5.7%, HR 0.45, 95% CI 0.21–0.94) were lower in the ARB group than the control group. Our study demonstrated that ARBs provide a greater protective effect than ACEIs in regard to long-term outcomes following cardiac surgery in patients with LC.