Predicting Overt Hepatic Encephalopathy for the Population With Cirrhosis
Elliot B. Tapper – 31 January 2019 – Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is associated with poor quality of life, sharply increased mortality, repeated hospitalizations, falls, and motor vehicle accidents. HE manifests with a dynamic spectrum of severity. Overt HE is clinically obvious disorientation, even coma. Although multiple strategies are available to characterize early‐stage HE, data are limited that validate these methods in predicting overt HE, many are impractical in clinical practice, and test cutoffs relevant to the average patient clinicians manage are lacking.