Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Pathophysiol. Feb 15, 2018; 9(1): 28-36
Published online Feb 15, 2018. doi: 10.4291/wjgp.v9.i1.28
Liver cirrhosis-effect on QT interval and cardiac autonomic nervous system activity
Elias Tsiompanidis, Spyros I Siakavellas, Anastasios Tentolouris, Ioanna Eleftheriadou, Stamatia Chorepsima, Anastasios Manolakis, Konstantinos Oikonomou, Nikolaos Tentolouris
Elias Tsiompanidis, Spyros I Siakavellas, Anastasios Tentolouris, Ioanna Eleftheriadou, Stamatia Chorepsima, Anastasios Manolakis, Konstantinos Oikonomou, Nikolaos Tentolouris, First Department of Propaedeutic Internal Medicine, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Laiko General Hospital, Athens 11527, Greece
Author contributions: Tsiompanidis E, Siakavellas SI, Tentolouris A, Eleftheriadou I, Chorepsima S, Manolakis A, Oikonomou K and Tentolouris N were involved in the design of the study, interpretation of results and writing of the manuscript; Tsiompanidis E, Siakavellas SI and Manolakis A participated in data acquisition; Tentolouris A, Eleftheriadou I, Chorepsima S and Tentolouris N conducted the statistical analysis; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The experimental protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Laiko General Hospital (Number of Permission: 2903/10-12-2014).
Informed consent statement: The study was approved by the ethics committee of Laiko General Hospital and written informed consent was obtained from all individuals before participation in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts of interest related to this work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Nikolaos Tentolouris, Associate Professor, First Department of Propaedeutic Internal Medicine, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Laiko General Hospital, 17 Agiou Thoma Street, Athens 11527, Greece. ntentol@med.uoa.gr
Telephone: +30-213-2061061 Fax: +30-213-2061794
Received: August 6, 2017
Peer-review started: August 7, 2017
First decision: September 7, 2017
Revised: October 4, 2017
Accepted: October 30, 2017
Article in press: October 30, 2017
Published online: February 15, 2018
Processing time: 186 Days and 22.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: QT interval is significantly prolonged in patients with liver cirrhosis and its duration is associated with the use of diuretics but not with the severity of the disease. More than half of the patients with cirrhosis have cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN), while CAN severity is associated strongly with the severity of cirrhosis.