THURSDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- About half of all patients with cirrhosis will develop functional renal failure after the development of ascites, and renal failure in these patients is linked to worse prognosis, according to research published in the July issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Silvia Montoliu, of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Badalona, Spain, and colleagues followed 263 patients with cirrhosis for an average of 41 months after their first incidence of ascites to assess the incidence and prognosis of different types of functional renal failure in this population.
During the follow-up period, the researchers found that 49 percent of the patients developed renal failure, with a one-year probability of developing renal failure of 23.6 percent. Renal failure was most commonly of pre-renal etiology (27.4 percent), followed by renal failure from infection (14.1 percent) and hepatorenal syndrome (7.6 percent). Development of renal failure in cirrhosis patients with ascites decreased the one-year survival probability from 91 to 46.9 percent. Baseline age, Child-Pugh score, and serum creatinine independently predicted development of functional renal failure.
"Because a first episode of functional renal failure development in cirrhotic patients is very frequent and has a negative impact in the natural history of cirrhosis with ascites, efforts to prevent its appearance should be performed, especially in those patients with high risk of developing it," the authors write.
Abstract
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