Intensive Care Therapy for Patients with Advanced Liver Diseases

Decompensated cirrhosis is characterized by high hospitalization rates and costs, frequent readmissions, and poor short-term survival. Patients admitted to the hospital with acute variceal bleeding and/or hepatic encephalopathy and/or renal dysfunction are at serious risk for developing infection and/or sepsis; in turn, this renders them highly susceptible to the development of multi-system organ failure. The lack of standardized intensive care unit management protocols in patients with cirrhosis along with only few data reports from longitudinal clinical trials makes it difficult for hepatologists and critical care specialists to provide uniform evidence for clinical practice that could safely consolidate favorable outcomes such as lower hospitalization rates and/or mortality. Based on a rigorous online search of the scientific literature as well as a longtime clinical experience of the authors in the field of hepatology and critical care medicine, this work represents a focused effort to elucidate the specific bio-morbidity of advanced liver diseases in relation to the aforementioned challenges in clinical management. Further meta-analyses and/or systematic reviews are needed to enable clinicians to develop more effective strategies to bridge patients with decompensated liver disease to recompensation or liver transplantation.