Esophagogastric varices predict mortality in hospitalized patients with alcoholic liver disease in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Western countries. The present study investigated the status and the risk factors for predicting mortality of ALD in Taiwan.

METHODOLOGY: We retrospective studied 100 consecutive in patients with ALD between 1992 and 2000. All patients had a history of alcohol consumption exceeding 80 g per day for at least 5 years.

RESULTS

The study comprised 93 men and 7 women with a mean age of 45.4 years. The ALD included fatty liver (21%), alcoholic hepatitis (15%), alcoholic hepatitis superimposed on alcoholic cirrhosis (24%), and alcoholic cirrhosis (40%). Forty-four percent of patients had esophagogastric varices. Thirty-three percent of patients were mortality. The presence of esophagogastric varices was the only parameter identified by univariate and multivariate analyses and had a statistically significant association with increased mortality (OR: 8.603; 95% CI: 2.009-36.864; p = 0.004). The cumulative survival for ALD patients with varices was significantly lower than for patients without varices.

CONCLUSIONS

The presence of esophagogastric varices had a statistically significant relationship with increased mortality. This study strongly implicates esophagogastric varices were a valuable poor prognostic factor with mortality. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy is a simple clinical available tool for the assessment of the occurrence of varices to predict the disease severity and mortality in hospitalized patients with ALD.