Acute liver failure etiology, clinical manifestation and outcomes in adults: Experience of tertiary care hospital in Karachi.

Abstract

Background: Many causal factors influence acute liver failure (ALF), including the primary underlying cause, age, and socioeconomic conditions. ALF outcomes depend on etiology, coagulopathy, bilirubin, age, and understanding of hepatic encephalopathy (HE), and help us predict coma and death.

Aim: To evaluate the association between etiologies, clinical manifestations, and outcomes of adults admitted with ALF.

Methods: This institution-based, prospective cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Karachi, from July 2019 to December 2022. A total of 102 patients diagnosed with ALF were included using consecutive sampling and data were collected from patients who visited Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Karachi, the gastroenterology and hepatology department, entered into Microsoft Excel, and analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 26.0. Diagnosis was based on King's College criteria: Age, encephalopathy grade, bilirubin, prothrombin time, international normalized ratio, creatinine, and etiology. We assessed the association between socioeconomic status and various outcomes using chi-square tests with a level of significance was less than 0.05.

Results: Mean age of the ALF cohort was 27.37 ± 6.60 years. Of the 102 patients, 71 (69.6%) were female, including 55 (77.5%) pregnant women with a mean gestational age of 34.56 ± 3.80 weeks. Regarding HE severity, 45 (44.1%) had grade III, and 13 (12.7%) had grade II. Among the patients admitted to the intensive care unit, 51 (72.9%) did not survive, while 14 (43.8%) recovered.

Conclusion: This study observed a high mortality rate among ALF patients in a tertiary care hospital. Hepatitis E virus infection, HE severity, and sepsis were significantly associated with higher mortality.