Nutritional support treatment for severe chronic hepatitis and posthepatitic cirrhosis

The therapeutic effectiveness of nutritional support in the treatment of severe chronic hepatitis and posthepatitic cirrhosis was evaluated. 143 patients with severe chronic hepatitis and 83 with posthepatitic cirrhosis were evaluated with SGA for assessing the nutritional status before the treatment. Patients with severe chronic hepatitis were divided into three groups: group A subject to enteral nutrition (EN) and parenteral nutrition (PN), group B subject to comprehensive treatment (CT)+PN; group C subject to CT+EN. The patients with posthepatitic cirrhosis were divided into two groups: group D receiving CT and group E receiving CT+PN+EN. The function of liver and kidney and nutritional status were monitored to assess the therapy in 6 weeks. The results showed before treatment, over 90 % patients had moderate to severe malnutrition. After nutritional support, the liver function (ALT, T-bil) and nutritional status (TP, TC) in group A was improved significantly as compared with that in groups B and C (P<0.05). Compared with group D, the values of TP and Alb were increased significantly in group E (P<0.05), but the levels of ALT, AST and T-bil had no obvious change. It was suggested that most patients with severe chronic hepatitis or posthepatitic cirrhosis had malnutrition to varying degrees. The nutritional support treatment could obviously improve the nutritional status of these patients, and was helpful to ameliorate the liver function of the patients with severe chronic hepatitis. Among the methods of nutritional support treatment, PN combined with EN had the best effectiveness.