Hepatorenal Syndrome Type 1: Current Challenges And Future Prospects

A Systematic Review of the Emerging Treatment for Hepatorenal Syndrome With a Principal Focus on Terlipressin: A Recent FDA-Approved Drug

BACKGROUND

 Hepatorenal syndrome (HRS), a consequence of liver cirrhosis, is the development of renal failure, which carries a grave prognosis. Reversing acute renal failure with various vasoconstrictor therapies at an appropriate time favors a good prognosis, especially when a liver transplant is not feasible.

OBJECTIVE

 This study aims to compare various treatment modalities to deduce an effective way to manage HRS.

METHODS

 The authors conducted a literature search in PubMed, Google Scholar, the Cochrane Library, and Science Direct in October 2022, using regular and MeSH keywords. A total of 1072 articles were identified. The PRISMA guidelines were used, the PICO framework was addressed, and the inclusion criteria were set based on studies from the past 10 years. After quality assessment, 14 studies were included for in-depth analysis in this review.  Results: A total of 14 studies were included after quality assessment, including randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and observational cohort studies. Nine hundred and forty-one patients represented this review's experimental and observational studies, apart from the other systematic reviews analyzed. Nine studies discovered that Terlipressin, especially when administered with albumin, was more effective than other conventional treatment modalities, including norepinephrine and midodrine, in terms of improving mortality and reversing the HRS. Four studies suggested that terlipressin exhibited similar effectiveness but found no significant difference. In contrast, one study found that norepinephrine was superior to terlipressin when particularly considering the adverse effects.

CONCLUSION

 Terlipressin, one of the most widely used vasoconstrictor agents across the world, seems to be effective in reversing renal failure in HRS. Although adverse effects are seen with this agent, it is still beneficial when compared to other medications. Further studies with larger sample sizes may be warranted.

Hepatorenal Syndrome and Other Post-Liver Transplantation Complications: Case Studies and Literature Review

Hepatorenal syndrome (HRS) was originally defined as a renal dysfunction caused by a decreased renal perfusion due to hemodynamic disturbances in the arterial circulation and an excessive activity of endogenous vasoactive systems in the course of cirrhosis. Considering the latest research, this syndrome may have a more complex pathomechanism. Equally often as in cirrhosis, HRS develops after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLTx) and worsens the prognosis significantly increasing mortality rates in this patient population. The prevalence of renal complications after OLTx and their negative prognostic impact on the survival of both the graft and the recipient prompted the authors of this work to analyze in detail 2 cases of HRS after OLTx to indicate the multiplicity of factors contributing to the pathophysiology of this syndrome. Attention was paid to risk factors for HRS found in the anamnesis before OLTx, especially a pre-existing renal dysfunction. In both cases early post-OLTx complications associated with the transplantation procedure were described: destabilization of the circulatory system, transfusions of blood products, prolonged stay at an intensive care unit, and necessity of introducing continuous renal replacement therapy. In the later period after the OLTx, infections (bacterial, fungal, viral) and drug nephrotoxicity, including the activity of immunosuppressants (tacrolimus), contributed primarily to the renal function impairment.

Liver kidney crosstalk: Hepatorenal syndrome

The dying liver causes the suffocation of the kidneys, which is a simplified way of describing the pathophysiology of hepatorenal syndrome (HRS). HRS is characterized by reversible functional renal impairment due to reduced blood supply and glomerular filtration rate, secondary to increased vasodilators. Over the years, HRS has gained much attention and focus among hepatologists and nephrologists. HRS is a diagnosis of exclusion, and in some cases, it carries a poor prognosis. Different classifications have emerged to better understand, diagnose, and promptly treat this condition. This targeted review aims to provide substantial insight into the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management of HRS, shed light on the various milestones of this condition, and add to our current understanding.

Hepatorenal syndrome: pathophysiology and evidence-based management update

Hepatorenal syndrome (HRS) is a functional renal failure that develops in patients with advanced hepatic cirrhosis with ascites and in those with fulminant hepatic failure. The prevalence of HRS varies among studies but in general it is the third most common cause of acute kidney injury (AKI) in cirrhotic patients after pre-renal azotemia and acute tubular necrosis. HRS carries a grim prognosis with a mortality rate approaching 90% three months after disease diagnosis. Fortunately, different strategies have been proven to be successful in preventing HRS. Although treatment options are available, they are not universally effective in restoring renal function but they might prolong survival long enough for liver transplantation, which is the ultimate treatment. Much has been learned in the last two decades regarding the pathophysiology and management of this disease which lead to notable evolution in the HRS definition and better understanding on how best to manage HRS patients. In the current review, we will summarize the recent advancement in epidemiology, pathophysiology, and management of HRS.

Predictive Analytics for Care and Management of Patients With Acute Diseases: Deep Learning-Based Method to Predict Crucial Complication Phenotypes

BACKGROUND

Acute diseases present severe complications that develop rapidly, exhibit distinct phenotypes, and have profound effects on patient outcomes. Predictive analytics can enhance physicians' care and management of patients with acute diseases by predicting crucial complication phenotypes for a timely diagnosis and treatment. However, effective phenotype predictions require several challenges to be overcome. First, patient data collected in the early stages of an acute disease (eg, clinical data and laboratory results) are less informative for predicting phenotypic outcomes. Second, patient data are temporal and heterogeneous; for example, patients receive laboratory tests at different time intervals and frequencies. Third, imbalanced distributions of patient outcomes create additional complexity for predicting complication phenotypes.

OBJECTIVE

To predict crucial complication phenotypes among patients with acute diseases, we propose a novel, deep learning-based method that uses recurrent neural network-based sequence embedding to represent disease progression while considering temporal heterogeneities in patient data. Our method incorporates a latent regulator to alleviate data insufficiency constraints by accounting for the underlying mechanisms that are not observed in patient data. The proposed method also includes cost-sensitive learning to address imbalanced outcome distributions in patient data for improved predictions.

METHODS

From a major health care organization in Taiwan, we obtained a sample of 10,354 electronic health records that pertained to 6545 patients with peritonitis. The proposed method projects these temporal, heterogeneous, and clinical data into a substantially reduced feature space and then incorporates a latent regulator (latent parameter matrix) to obviate data insufficiencies and account for variations in phenotypic expressions. Moreover, our method employs cost-sensitive learning to further increase the predictive performance.

RESULTS

We evaluated the efficacy of the proposed method for predicting two hepatic complication phenotypes in patients with peritonitis: acute hepatic encephalopathy and hepatorenal syndrome. The following three benchmark techniques were evaluated: temporal multiple measurement case-based reasoning (MMCBR), temporal short long-term memory (T-SLTM) networks, and time fusion convolutional neural network (CNN). For acute hepatic encephalopathy predictions, our method attained an area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.82, which outperforms temporal MMCBR by 64%, T-SLTM by 26%, and time fusion CNN by 26%. For hepatorenal syndrome predictions, our method achieved an AUC value of 0.64, which is 29% better than that of temporal MMCBR (0.54). Overall, the evaluation results show that the proposed method significantly outperforms all the benchmarks, as measured by recall, F-measure, and AUC while maintaining comparable precision values.

CONCLUSIONS

The proposed method learns a short-term temporal representation from patient data to predict complication phenotypes and offers greater predictive utilities than prevalent data-driven techniques. This method is generalizable and can be applied to different acute disease (illness) scenarios that are characterized by insufficient patient clinical data availability, temporal heterogeneities, and imbalanced distributions of important patient outcomes.

Does Anemia Have a Potential Effect on Type 2 Hepatorenal Syndrome?

Background/Aims. Hepatorenal syndrome (HRS) is a form of functional renal failure arising in advanced cirrhosis and is characterized by a poor survival rate. Anemia is frequently observed during the clinical course of cirrhosis. Our study aimed to investigate the hematologic findings in patients with cirrhosis to determine the effects of anemia on renal functions in type 2 HRS and if it was a potential aggravating factor. Materials and Methods. This prospective study, in which all consecutive patients with cirrhosis were enrolled, was performed at a tertiary-level hospital (Military Hospital of Tunis) from January 2019 to June 2019. A total of 9 patients with HRS fulfilled the type 2 HRS diagnostic criteria, and 41 patients with cirrhosis without HRS were included. All data regarding patients were obtained from the medical record. Demographic data, routine hemograms, biochemical, and urinary test results were collected. Models of end-stage liver disease (MELD) and Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) scores were calculated. Results. The most common etiology of cirrhosis was viral hepatitis (66%). According to the CTP score, 23 patients were in the CTP-A stage, 13 in the CTP-B stage, and 14 patients were in the CTP-C stage. Patients with type 2 HRS had significantly lower hemoglobin levels compared with non-HRS stable cirrhosis patients. As hemoglobin levels decreased, renal function worsened on patients with type 2 HRS. Patients with lower hemoglobin levels had poor prognosis and survival compared with patients with higher hemoglobin levels. Logistic regression analysis showed that lower hemoglobin levels and higher MELD and CTP scores were statistically significant for an onset of type 2 HRS. Conclusion. Renal dysfunction is a frequent complication in patients with end-stage chronic liver disease. The role of anemia in aggravating HRS in patients with cirrhosis is explained by hypoxia that can lead to microcirculatory renal ischemia. Other studies are required to determine if anemia is a precipitant factor for HRS or not.