title: Determining the frequency and severity of malnutrition and correlating it with the severity of liver cirrhosis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Malnutrition is a significant problem in cirrhosis of the liver worldwide. Inadequate data is available on the nutritional status of Pakistani patients. This study aimed to determine the frequency and severity of malnutrition in patients having cirrhosis of the liver and to compare the degree of malnutrition with the severity of liver disease.
  
  
  METHODS
  Two hundred ninety-eight patients with liver cirrhosis were included in the study. Nutritional status was assessed using the Royal Free Hospital Global Assessment scheme for cirrhotics. The patients were categorized into well-nourished, and mild to moderately and severely malnourished. Various degrees of malnutrition were compared with severity of disease according to Child-Pugh staging.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the 298 patients with liver cirrhosis, hepatitis C (54,36%) and B (35,90%) were the commonest aetiologies, followed by autoimmune hepatitis (3,35%), primary billiary cirrhosis (2,34%), Wilson's disease (1,34%), haemochromatosis (1,0%), cryptogenic cirrhosis (1,0%), and alcohol being the rare cause (0,67%). 14,42% patients were well-nourished, (54,02%) were mildto moderately malnourished and (31,54%) were severely malnourished. Malnutrition is more frequent in virus-related cirrhosis, and the degree of malnutrition increases with increasing clinical severity as assessed by Child- Pugh stages with statistically significant p-value of 0.001.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Moderate to severe malnutrition among diverse aetiologies of cirrhosis is quite common in Pakistan. The degree of malnutrition increases with increasing clinical severity of cirrhosis of liver.
authors.affiliation: Dow University of Health Sciences Civil Hospital Karachi, Department of Internal Medicine, Karachi, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Iftikhar Haider
authors.initials: IH
authors.lastname: Naqvi
authors.forename: Khalid
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mahmood
authors.forename: Sirajus
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Salekeen
authors.forename: Syed Tehseen
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Akhter
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000150:complications*; D008297:Male; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012720:Severity of Illness Index