Clinical utility of bioimpedance analysis in liver cirrhosis

The objective of the present study was to examine the impact of muscle mass depletion (MMD) as determined by data in bioimpedance analysis (BIA) in liver cirrhosis (LC) patients (n = 382, 204 in male and 178 in female) on survival and to validate the utility of cutoff values in BIA recommended from current recommendations.

Muscle mass depletion was defined as patients with skeletal muscle mass index (SMI) using BIA <7.0 cm² /m² for male and <5.7 cm² /m² for female based on current recommendations. We retrospectively examined variables related to the presence of MMD using univariate and multivariate analyses and investigated the impact of MMD on survival.

A total of 135 patients (35.3%) had MMD. Subjects were predominantly Child-Pugh A (278/382, 72.8%). For the entire cohort, the 5-year cumulative survival rates were 59.8% in patients with MMD and 84.4% in patients without MMD (P < 0.0001). In the multivariate analysis for survival, MMD revealed to be a significant adverse predictor for survival and for most subgroup analyses, the differences between MMD group and non-MMD group in terms of survival reached significance.

Muscle mass measurement using BIA may be helpful for LC patients and current recommendations were well verified in our analysis.