Background/Aims A large percentage of patients undergoing esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) screening do not have esophageal varices (EV) or have only small EV. We evaluated a large, international, multicenter cohort to develop a novel score, termed FIB-4plus, by combining the fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) score, liver stiffness measurement (LSM), and spleen stiffness measurement (SSM) to identify high-risk EV (HRV) in compensated cirrhosis.
Methods This international cohort study involved patients with compensated cirrhosis from 17 Chinese hospitals and one Croatian institution (NCT04546360). Two-dimensional shear wave elastography-derived LSM and SSM values, and components of the FIB-4 score (i.e., age, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, and platelet count [PLT]) were combined using machine learning algorithms (logistic regression [LR] and extreme gradient boosting [XGBoost]) to develop the LR-FIB-4plus and XGBoost-FIB-4plus models, respectively. Shapley Additive exPlanations method was used to interpret the model predictions.
Results We analyzed data from 502 patients with compensated cirrhosis who underwent EGD screening. The XGBoost-FIB-4plus score demonstrated superior predictive performance for HRV, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.927 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.897–0.957) in the training cohort (n=268), and 0.919 (95% CI 0.843–0.995) and 0.902 (95% CI 0.820–0.984) in the first (n=118) and second (n=82) external validation cohorts, respectively. Additionally, the XGBoost-FIB-4plus score exhibited high AUROC values for predicting EV across all cohorts. The FIB-4plus score outperformed the individual parameters (LSM, SSM, PLT, and FIB-4).
Conclusions The FIB-4plus score effectively predicted EV and HRV in patients with compensated cirrhosis, providing clinicians with a valuable tool for optimizing patient management and outcomes.
Citations
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The evolution of non-invasive strategies in cirrhosis management—from screening to precision monitoring: Editorial on “Fibrosis-4plus score: a novel machine learning-based tool for screening high-risk varices in compensated cirrhosis (CHESS2004): an inter Haiyu Wang, Jinjun Chen Clinical and Molecular Hepatology.2026; 32(1): 403. CrossRef
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Background/Aims In recent years, greater assessment accuracy after transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) to ascertain prognosis has become important in decompensated cirrhosis due to portal hypertension. The aim of this study was to assess the ratio of the portal pressure gradient (PPG) pre-TIPS (pre-PPG) to albumin (PPA), which influence ascites formation in cirrhotic patients in the 6-months after TIPS placement, and is a metric introduced in our study.
Methods This was a retrospective cohort study of 58 patients with decompensated cirrhosis admitted to an academic hospital for the purpose of TIPS placement. We collected the following data: demographics, laboratory measures, and PPG during the TIPS procedure. Then we analyzed the association between the above data and ascites formation postTIPS in cirrhosis patients.
Results Twenty-two patients with ascites and 28 without ascites were evaluated. Univariate and binary logistic regression analysis were adjusted for the following variables: to determine prognosis; Child-Pugh scores, lymphocyte count, platelet count, hemoglobin level, albumin level and pre-PPG or PPA. The outcome showed that PPA was better than pre-PPG and albumin for predicting ascites according to area under receiver operating characteristic curves and a statistical model that also showed PPA’s influence 6-months post-TIPS.
Conclusions The combined measurement of pre-PPG and albumin, defined as PPA, may provide a better way to predict post-TIPS ascites in decompensated cirrhosis, which underlines the need for a large clinical trial in the future.
Citations
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