Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Aug 16, 2022; 10(23): 8097-8106
Published online Aug 16, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i23.8097
Nonselective beta-blocker use is associated with increased hepatic encephalopathy-related readmissions in cirrhosis
Mohammad Amin Fallahzadeh, Sumeet K Asrani, Elliot B Tapper, Giovanna Saracino, Robert S Rahimi
Mohammad Amin Fallahzadeh, Department of Internal Medicine, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75246, United States
Sumeet K Asrani, Giovanna Saracino, Robert S Rahimi, Division of Hepatology, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75246, United States
Elliot B Tapper, Division of Hepatology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States
Author contributions: Fallahazdeh MA, Asrani SK and Rahimi RS designed the research study; Fallahzadeh MA, Asrani SK, Tapper EB, Saracino G and Rahimi RS performed the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data; Fallahzadeh MA, Asrani SK and Rahimi RS drafted the manuscript and all authors contributed to revising the manuscript critically; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved for publication by our Institutional Reviewer.
Informed consent statement: According to the IRB protocol and policy, all participants of the study provided informed consent indirectly about personal and medical data collection prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at aminfa91@gmail.com. Consent was not obtained but the presented data are anonymized and risk of identification is low. No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Mohammad Amin Fallahzadeh, MD, Doctor, Department of Internal Medicine, Baylor University Medical Center, 3500 Gaston Ave, Dallas, TX 75246, United States. aminfa91@gmail.com
Received: March 7, 2022
Peer-review started: March 7, 2022
First decision: April 5, 2022
Revised: April 13, 2022
Accepted: July 11, 2022
Article in press: July 11, 2022
Published online: August 16, 2022
Processing time: 147 Days and 4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: In this study, we evaluated the impact of nonselective beta-blocker (NSBB) administration on hepatic encephalopathy (HE)-related readmissions in patients with Child B or C cirrhosis. After adjusting for markers of liver disease severity, NSBB use was independently associated with the first HE-related readmissions. NSBB use was also an independent predictor of HE-related admissions per person-month.