Monthly average in hospital admission for alcoholic hepatitis increases 9% post COVID-19
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Although pre-and post-COVID-19 monthly admission rates were stable for non-alcoholic and alcoholic cirrhosis; alcoholic hepatitis admissions increased, according to a presentation at the International Liver Congress.
“Our results actually show that an increase in alcohol sales post pandemic will impact significantly the natural history of alcohol liver disease in Canada and probably most of the Western world,” Abdel-Aziz Shaheen, MD, from the Cumming School of Medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology division, department of medicine University of Calgary, in Canada, said during his presentation.
Shaheen and colleagues used validated international clinical classification coding algorithms to identify liver-related hospitalizations for non-alcoholic cirrhosis, alcoholic cirrhosis and alcoholic hepatitis in the province of Alberta, Canada, through 2018-2020. They identified 2,916 hospitalizations for non-alcoholic cirrhosis, 2,318 hospitalizations for alcoholic cirrhosis, and 1,408 alcoholic hepatitis hospitalizations.
According to researchers, inclusion criteria for alcoholic hepatitis included a diagnosis code of alcoholic hepatits and elevated alanine aminotransferase or aspartate aminotransferase, and elevated international normalized ratio. They compared post COVID-19 restrictions (April – Sept 2020) with prior study periods and assessed inflection points with joinpoint regression.
Results showed no significant changed between average monthly admission rate, demographics, ICU admissions and in-hospital mortality among alcoholic and non-alcoholic cirrhosis cohorts. Investigators reported patients with alcoholic hepatitis had an increase in average monthly admission (69.5 vs. 39.6; P < .001). April 2020 was the inflection point, according to Shaheen and colleagues.
While alcoholic hepatitis patients admitted post COVID-19 restrictions were younger (median age 43 vs. 47; P = .02), no significant differences were observed in admission outcomes pre- and post-COVID-19 among the alcoholic hepatitis cohort.
“We found a decrease in mortality among non-alcoholic cirrhosis patients post pandemic,” Shaheen said. “It went down from 11.5% to 8.5%.” The striking, alarming result we found was a 9% increase on the monthly average for alcohol hepatitis admission post pandemic.”
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Shaheen A, et al. Poster: PO-1099. Presented at: The International Liver Congress; June 23-26 (virtual meeting).
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