Clinical features of patients with liver failure accompanied with non-thyroid sick syndrome / 中华传染病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate clinical characteristics of patients with liver failure accompanied with non-thyroid sick syndrome (NTIS) and the predictive value for short-term prognosis.Methods Ninety patients with liver failure hospitalized in Tianjin Second People's Hospital from January 2013 to December 2017 were retrospectively enrolled.Among them,75 patients (liver failure group) were randomly selected to establish prognostic models and the other 15 were selected for model validation.Another 75 patients at the same time of hospitalization with chronic hepatitis were randomly selected as the control group.The serum free triiodothyronine (FT3),free thyroxine (FT4) and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) were measured by chemiluminescence.The clinical characteristics and survival rates 3 months after admission of patients with liver failure accompanied with NTIS were analyzed.The predictive value of the model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score,Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) score,chronic liver failure-sequential organ failure assessment (CLIF-SOFA) score,FT3-MELD model and FT3 for prognosis of liver failure were evaluated.Quantitative data were analyzed with Student's t-test and Mann-Whitney U test.Count data were analyzed with chi-square test.Results The liver failure group had significantly lower levels of FT3,TSH and albumin (Alb),but higher levels of total bilirubin (TBil),international normalized ration (INR),serum creatinine (Cr) and FT4 than the control group.NTIS was diagnosed in 50 patients with liver failure (50/75,66.67％).There were 32 deaths in patients with NTIS and 7 in patients with non-NTIS.The difference was statistically significant (x2 =8.654,P =0.003).INR,Cr,FT3,MELD score,CTP score and CLIF-SOFA score were significantly different between the survival and death groups (t =-3.037,t =-2,720,t =4.100,t =-4.221,t =-3.471,and t =-3.901,respectively;all P ＜ 0.01).A negative correlation was observed between FT3 and MELD score (r =-0.439,P ＜ 0.01).The area under the receiver's operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the FT3-MELD model was 0.816,with the optimal cut-off-point of 0.121 7,sensitivity of 0.769 and specificity of 0.833.The areas under the curve of the FT3,MELD score,CTP score and CLIF-SOFA score were 0.794,0.775,0.699,and 0.739,respectively.Conclusions Liver function and thyroid function are poor in patients with liver failure accompanied with NTIS.The FT3-MELD model is superior to CTP score and CLIF-SOFA score in predicting the short-term prognosis in patients with liver failure.