Characteristics of symptom in patients with hepatic cirrhosis of different etiologies

Abstract

Backgrounds: The complications of hepatic cirrhosis are responsible for death and hospitalization. We aimed to analyze the clinical characteristics in cirrhotic symptom according to etiology.Methods: A total of 1,573 admissions of decompensated hepatic cirrhosis in the hospital were enrolled between September 2014 and August 2019. We described the relationships between major symptoms and cirrhotic etiologies. We assessed the secondary hepatic encephalopathy for each cirrhotic etiology.Results: Among all complications, the constituent ratio of gastrointestinal hemorrhage was 37.87%, followed by ascites and jaundice with 23.70% and 11.40%, respectively. Gastrointestinal hemorrhage was more presented in hepatitis B and hepatitis C than in alcoholic cirrhosis (57.59%, 47.86% and 42.19%, p < 0.05). No significant difference was found between hepatitis B and hepatitis C for all symptoms. Jaundice was the major symptom in primary biliary cirrhosis and autoimmune cirrhosis. Alcoholic cirrhotic patients had a higher rate to develop secondary encephalopathy than other etiologies (13.51%, p < 0.05).Conclusions: Gastrointestinal hemorrhage was the main symptom for hospitalization in decompensated cirrhotic patients. Patients of hepatitis cirrhosis were more likely to have gastrointestinal hemorrhage than those of alcohol cirrhosis. Patients of alcohol cirrhosis were likely to develop a secondary encephalopathy following the presentation of other symptoms.