Correlation between Severity of Liver Disease According to CHILD & MELD Scores and Degree of Cardiac Impairment

Abstract

Cirrhosis is a late stage of scarring (fibrosis) of the liver caused by many forms of liver diseases and conditions, such as hepatitis and chronic alcoholism. The prevalence of cirrhosis has nearly doubled over the last decade, and the number of hospitalizations has similarly increased. Liver cirrhosis has a high impact on public healthcare, representing an important cause of mortality worldwide. Cardiac complications are not rare during decompensated liver cirrhosis, including diastolic and systolic dysfunction and cardiac electrophysiological remodeling, known as cirrhotic cardiomyopathy. Cardiac complications of liver cirrhosis are typically the result of medications, hemodynamic disorders, infections, inflammatory states, and other unknown factors Some patients with liver cirrhosis develop a progressive cardiac dysfunction, a condition named cirrhotic cardiomyopathy, that consists of an impaired ventricular performance to different stressful conditions, and may not be clinically significant at rest because of the high cardiac output and low systemic vascular resistance, both present in late stages of liver cirrhosis. Cirrhotic cardiomyopathy may have a prevalence of up to 60%. It is present in both adult and paediatric pa