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(AUD), concludes a review discussing care for patients recently hospitalized.
“Probably the biggest thing I would want providers to take away from the review is to remember that these patients are likely to carry a dual diagnosis,” said lead author Akshay Shetty, MD, Pfleger Liver Institute, UCLA Medical Center.
“It is important to address the liver disease, because it probably carries the biggest mortality and morbidity risk in the short term, but we have to remember to treat their alcohol use disorder simultaneously,” Dr. Shetty said.
The guidance by Dr. Shetty and coauthors was published online in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.
More alcohol misuse means more liver disease
AH is a “unique, severe form of alcohol-associated steatohepatitis that is seen in the background of recent heavy alcohol use,” the team writes. Patients with severe AH have faced mortality rates as high as 20%-50%. A recent study reported a drop in 30-day mortality rates to 17%, which the authors credit to improved supportive medical management.
Alcohol misuse has surged over the past two decades, which experts believe will lead to a rise in alcohol-related liver disease, including AH hospitalization, the authors note. Rates of high-risk drinking in the United States (four or more drinks daily for women, five or more for men) increased by almost 30% between 2002 and 2012, particularly among women and ethnic minorities.
At the same time, rates of AUD rose 25% among young adults. In 2019, a U.S. survey found 14.5 million people aged 12 years and older in the United States carried an AUD diagnosis.
Meanwhile, the U.S. National Inpatient Sample revealed a 28.3% rise in AH-related hospitalizations between 2007 and 2014.
“AH patients carry a high short-term mortality [and] require close outpatient monitoring and significant care coordination,” write the authors. Despite the rising rates of severe AH, there is a lack of standardized guidance on post-discharge management, which motivated their clinical care review.
Liver disease shapes short-term outcomes
The management of patients with a recent episode of severe AH requires a two-pronged approach and shared patient management between gastroenterologists/hepatologists and addiction specialists. The multidisciplinary management both improves outcomes and is linked to reduced health care costs, the authors write.
While abstinence from alcohol remains essential to recovery, the authors note, it is the “severity of hepatic decompensation that has been shown to dictate short-term mortality in the initial 6 months” following discharge.
The team created an outpatient algorithm that divides patient care into two main areas: hepatic decompensation and AUD.
For the risk of hepatic decompensation, patients should undergo close monitoring for infections and frequent laboratory tests in the months following discharge.
Moreover, the “majority of patients with severe AH usually have background cirrhosis and are at risk of portal hypertensive decompensations similar to cirrhosis,” the authors write, and so patients should be assessed for hepatic encephalopathy, as well as for ascites and variceal bleeding.
For HE, the authors recommend a low threshold for treatment initiation with lactulose (a colonic acidifier) and the antibiotic rifaximin, but they suggest that ascites management “should be conservative ... with strict adherence to a low-sodium diet as the first-line approach.”
A key problem among severe AH patients post-discharge is malnutrition, which reaches 100% prevalence and is associated with the severity of liver disease, including decompensation and mortality, they note.
Patients with malnutrition are at risk of entering a catabolic starvation state. The authors recommend avoiding long fasting periods with multiple small meals and late evening snacks.
Long-term, severe AH patients should be assessed for advanced fibrosis, although early diagnosis is often challenging, as the clinical and laboratory results typically mimic findings of liver cirrhosis, the authors write.
Crucially, patients should be considered for early referral for liver transplantation, because early liver transplantation is associated with “excellent transplant outcomes and is noninferior when compared with other etiologies of chronic liver disease,” they write.
Long-term risk rests on preventing alcohol relapse
Turning to AUD, the team notes that long-term outcomes among AH patients depend on the prevention of alcohol relapse, because alcohol use among these patients is directly linked to higher rates of mortality and decompensation.
The authors concede that the “definition of relapse remains a matter of contention, especially in the post-liver transplant population,” but they recommend complete abstinence for patients recovering from AH and define relapse as any use of alcohol.
Dr. Shetty explained that “often, the focus tends to be on the acute threats to a patient’s life, so their liver disease tends to be emphasized, and we often forget why patients present with the liver disease in the first place.”
He continued: “So we do our best to address the liver disease and not a lot gets done for the alcohol-use disorder that the patient may have in the background. The expectation is that, if the doctors help patients with their liver disease, the patients will learn that lesson on their own and stop drinking.”
Instead, Dr. Shetty and his colleagues advise, all patients should be screened for AUD and undergo surveillance with alcohol biomarkers monthly at first. Patients should also be referred to an addiction specialist, where some combination of psychotherapy, mutual support groups, and pharmacotherapy can be tailored to individual patient needs and access.
Multidisciplinary management, comprising hepatology, psychiatry, psychologist, nurse, and social worker consults, has shown “promising results in the management of AUD, improvement in liver disease, and decrease in health care burden,” the authors write, although “multidisciplinary clinics often carry financial and administrative barriers to broad application.”
Moreover, these interventions require a commitment from the patient, at least in the short term, to allow the establishment of a therapeutic relationship between the clinician and the patient and aid compliance over the longer term.
“Patients with AUD remain reluctant to pursue treatment,” the authors write, “and a large-scale effort to improve knowledge gaps in regard to AUD treatment and its success is needed, both from patients’ primary care providers and their consultants.”
Dr. Shetty explained that patient engagement is “probably the most challenging aspect of the disease, especially the alcohol use disorder part.”
This is partly because patients often lack insight, and alcohol addiction carries stigma and shame, as well as self-blame, he said, and so patients will “often delay pursuing any therapy ... even when they are sick.”
Dr. Shetty believes that reducing the stigma around alcohol addiction will require better education of patients and health care providers. To that end, he noted that the scientific literature now avoids the pejorative “alcoholic” and instead describes alcohol use as a disorder rather than having it define the patient.
“But this educational aspect is going to take a long time to really take effect, so from a provider perspective ... it is important to be open-minded when seeing these patients,” he said. This means not focusing on “the medical aspect alone but trying to really see the person who’s come to you for help and understand their motivations for pursing medical care.”
“Despite all these things, some patients may still find it very challenging and awkward. It takes several visits to really establish a rapport with them and get a sense of how to get them to share the challenging aspects of the disease,” Dr. Shetty added.
Multidisciplinary management for optimal outcomes
In a comment, Nancy S. Reau, MD, chair of hepatology, Rush Medical College, Chicago, agreed with the need to address both the risk for hepatic decompensation and AUD, the benefits of multidisciplinary management of patients, and the importance of patient engagement to successful outcomes.
“As hepatologists, we are often best at managing liver disease, but if you don’t also address the alcohol use disorder, the patient will not have the optimal outcome,” she said in an interview. “Most patients with severe AH have cirrhosis, [which] makes longitudinal follow-up imperative.”
“They are at risk for liver complications but also need aggressive nutritional support and management of their addiction,” she said. “As they improve, they can usually continue intensive treatment.”
Akhil Anand, MD, an addiction psychiatrist and co-director of the Multidisciplinary Alcohol Program at the Cleveland Clinic, also noted the increase in cases of alcohol-associated hepatitis from rising alcohol use.
The review “provides a timely, comprehensive, and impartial overview” of how to manage the condition, he said, as well as “how to treat co-occurring alcohol use disorder in this life-threatening situation.”
No funding was declared. The authors report no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
(AUD), concludes a review discussing care for patients recently hospitalized.
“Probably the biggest thing I would want providers to take away from the review is to remember that these patients are likely to carry a dual diagnosis,” said lead author Akshay Shetty, MD, Pfleger Liver Institute, UCLA Medical Center.
“It is important to address the liver disease, because it probably carries the biggest mortality and morbidity risk in the short term, but we have to remember to treat their alcohol use disorder simultaneously,” Dr. Shetty said.
The guidance by Dr. Shetty and coauthors was published online in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.
More alcohol misuse means more liver disease
AH is a “unique, severe form of alcohol-associated steatohepatitis that is seen in the background of recent heavy alcohol use,” the team writes. Patients with severe AH have faced mortality rates as high as 20%-50%. A recent study reported a drop in 30-day mortality rates to 17%, which the authors credit to improved supportive medical management.
Alcohol misuse has surged over the past two decades, which experts believe will lead to a rise in alcohol-related liver disease, including AH hospitalization, the authors note. Rates of high-risk drinking in the United States (four or more drinks daily for women, five or more for men) increased by almost 30% between 2002 and 2012, particularly among women and ethnic minorities.
At the same time, rates of AUD rose 25% among young adults. In 2019, a U.S. survey found 14.5 million people aged 12 years and older in the United States carried an AUD diagnosis.
Meanwhile, the U.S. National Inpatient Sample revealed a 28.3% rise in AH-related hospitalizations between 2007 and 2014.
“AH patients carry a high short-term mortality [and] require close outpatient monitoring and significant care coordination,” write the authors. Despite the rising rates of severe AH, there is a lack of standardized guidance on post-discharge management, which motivated their clinical care review.
Liver disease shapes short-term outcomes
The management of patients with a recent episode of severe AH requires a two-pronged approach and shared patient management between gastroenterologists/hepatologists and addiction specialists. The multidisciplinary management both improves outcomes and is linked to reduced health care costs, the authors write.
While abstinence from alcohol remains essential to recovery, the authors note, it is the “severity of hepatic decompensation that has been shown to dictate short-term mortality in the initial 6 months” following discharge.
The team created an outpatient algorithm that divides patient care into two main areas: hepatic decompensation and AUD.
For the risk of hepatic decompensation, patients should undergo close monitoring for infections and frequent laboratory tests in the months following discharge.
Moreover, the “majority of patients with severe AH usually have background cirrhosis and are at risk of portal hypertensive decompensations similar to cirrhosis,” the authors write, and so patients should be assessed for hepatic encephalopathy, as well as for ascites and variceal bleeding.
For HE, the authors recommend a low threshold for treatment initiation with lactulose (a colonic acidifier) and the antibiotic rifaximin, but they suggest that ascites management “should be conservative ... with strict adherence to a low-sodium diet as the first-line approach.”
A key problem among severe AH patients post-discharge is malnutrition, which reaches 100% prevalence and is associated with the severity of liver disease, including decompensation and mortality, they note.
Patients with malnutrition are at risk of entering a catabolic starvation state. The authors recommend avoiding long fasting periods with multiple small meals and late evening snacks.
Long-term, severe AH patients should be assessed for advanced fibrosis, although early diagnosis is often challenging, as the clinical and laboratory results typically mimic findings of liver cirrhosis, the authors write.
Crucially, patients should be considered for early referral for liver transplantation, because early liver transplantation is associated with “excellent transplant outcomes and is noninferior when compared with other etiologies of chronic liver disease,” they write.
Long-term risk rests on preventing alcohol relapse
Turning to AUD, the team notes that long-term outcomes among AH patients depend on the prevention of alcohol relapse, because alcohol use among these patients is directly linked to higher rates of mortality and decompensation.
The authors concede that the “definition of relapse remains a matter of contention, especially in the post-liver transplant population,” but they recommend complete abstinence for patients recovering from AH and define relapse as any use of alcohol.
Dr. Shetty explained that “often, the focus tends to be on the acute threats to a patient’s life, so their liver disease tends to be emphasized, and we often forget why patients present with the liver disease in the first place.”
He continued: “So we do our best to address the liver disease and not a lot gets done for the alcohol-use disorder that the patient may have in the background. The expectation is that, if the doctors help patients with their liver disease, the patients will learn that lesson on their own and stop drinking.”
Instead, Dr. Shetty and his colleagues advise, all patients should be screened for AUD and undergo surveillance with alcohol biomarkers monthly at first. Patients should also be referred to an addiction specialist, where some combination of psychotherapy, mutual support groups, and pharmacotherapy can be tailored to individual patient needs and access.
Multidisciplinary management, comprising hepatology, psychiatry, psychologist, nurse, and social worker consults, has shown “promising results in the management of AUD, improvement in liver disease, and decrease in health care burden,” the authors write, although “multidisciplinary clinics often carry financial and administrative barriers to broad application.”
Moreover, these interventions require a commitment from the patient, at least in the short term, to allow the establishment of a therapeutic relationship between the clinician and the patient and aid compliance over the longer term.
“Patients with AUD remain reluctant to pursue treatment,” the authors write, “and a large-scale effort to improve knowledge gaps in regard to AUD treatment and its success is needed, both from patients’ primary care providers and their consultants.”
Dr. Shetty explained that patient engagement is “probably the most challenging aspect of the disease, especially the alcohol use disorder part.”
This is partly because patients often lack insight, and alcohol addiction carries stigma and shame, as well as self-blame, he said, and so patients will “often delay pursuing any therapy ... even when they are sick.”
Dr. Shetty believes that reducing the stigma around alcohol addiction will require better education of patients and health care providers. To that end, he noted that the scientific literature now avoids the pejorative “alcoholic” and instead describes alcohol use as a disorder rather than having it define the patient.
“But this educational aspect is going to take a long time to really take effect, so from a provider perspective ... it is important to be open-minded when seeing these patients,” he said. This means not focusing on “the medical aspect alone but trying to really see the person who’s come to you for help and understand their motivations for pursing medical care.”
“Despite all these things, some patients may still find it very challenging and awkward. It takes several visits to really establish a rapport with them and get a sense of how to get them to share the challenging aspects of the disease,” Dr. Shetty added.
Multidisciplinary management for optimal outcomes
In a comment, Nancy S. Reau, MD, chair of hepatology, Rush Medical College, Chicago, agreed with the need to address both the risk for hepatic decompensation and AUD, the benefits of multidisciplinary management of patients, and the importance of patient engagement to successful outcomes.
“As hepatologists, we are often best at managing liver disease, but if you don’t also address the alcohol use disorder, the patient will not have the optimal outcome,” she said in an interview. “Most patients with severe AH have cirrhosis, [which] makes longitudinal follow-up imperative.”
“They are at risk for liver complications but also need aggressive nutritional support and management of their addiction,” she said. “As they improve, they can usually continue intensive treatment.”
Akhil Anand, MD, an addiction psychiatrist and co-director of the Multidisciplinary Alcohol Program at the Cleveland Clinic, also noted the increase in cases of alcohol-associated hepatitis from rising alcohol use.
The review “provides a timely, comprehensive, and impartial overview” of how to manage the condition, he said, as well as “how to treat co-occurring alcohol use disorder in this life-threatening situation.”
No funding was declared. The authors report no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
(AUD), concludes a review discussing care for patients recently hospitalized.
“Probably the biggest thing I would want providers to take away from the review is to remember that these patients are likely to carry a dual diagnosis,” said lead author Akshay Shetty, MD, Pfleger Liver Institute, UCLA Medical Center.
“It is important to address the liver disease, because it probably carries the biggest mortality and morbidity risk in the short term, but we have to remember to treat their alcohol use disorder simultaneously,” Dr. Shetty said.
The guidance by Dr. Shetty and coauthors was published online in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.
More alcohol misuse means more liver disease
AH is a “unique, severe form of alcohol-associated steatohepatitis that is seen in the background of recent heavy alcohol use,” the team writes. Patients with severe AH have faced mortality rates as high as 20%-50%. A recent study reported a drop in 30-day mortality rates to 17%, which the authors credit to improved supportive medical management.
Alcohol misuse has surged over the past two decades, which experts believe will lead to a rise in alcohol-related liver disease, including AH hospitalization, the authors note. Rates of high-risk drinking in the United States (four or more drinks daily for women, five or more for men) increased by almost 30% between 2002 and 2012, particularly among women and ethnic minorities.
At the same time, rates of AUD rose 25% among young adults. In 2019, a U.S. survey found 14.5 million people aged 12 years and older in the United States carried an AUD diagnosis.
Meanwhile, the U.S. National Inpatient Sample revealed a 28.3% rise in AH-related hospitalizations between 2007 and 2014.
“AH patients carry a high short-term mortality [and] require close outpatient monitoring and significant care coordination,” write the authors. Despite the rising rates of severe AH, there is a lack of standardized guidance on post-discharge management, which motivated their clinical care review.
Liver disease shapes short-term outcomes
The management of patients with a recent episode of severe AH requires a two-pronged approach and shared patient management between gastroenterologists/hepatologists and addiction specialists. The multidisciplinary management both improves outcomes and is linked to reduced health care costs, the authors write.
While abstinence from alcohol remains essential to recovery, the authors note, it is the “severity of hepatic decompensation that has been shown to dictate short-term mortality in the initial 6 months” following discharge.
The team created an outpatient algorithm that divides patient care into two main areas: hepatic decompensation and AUD.
For the risk of hepatic decompensation, patients should undergo close monitoring for infections and frequent laboratory tests in the months following discharge.
Moreover, the “majority of patients with severe AH usually have background cirrhosis and are at risk of portal hypertensive decompensations similar to cirrhosis,” the authors write, and so patients should be assessed for hepatic encephalopathy, as well as for ascites and variceal bleeding.
For HE, the authors recommend a low threshold for treatment initiation with lactulose (a colonic acidifier) and the antibiotic rifaximin, but they suggest that ascites management “should be conservative ... with strict adherence to a low-sodium diet as the first-line approach.”
A key problem among severe AH patients post-discharge is malnutrition, which reaches 100% prevalence and is associated with the severity of liver disease, including decompensation and mortality, they note.
Patients with malnutrition are at risk of entering a catabolic starvation state. The authors recommend avoiding long fasting periods with multiple small meals and late evening snacks.
Long-term, severe AH patients should be assessed for advanced fibrosis, although early diagnosis is often challenging, as the clinical and laboratory results typically mimic findings of liver cirrhosis, the authors write.
Crucially, patients should be considered for early referral for liver transplantation, because early liver transplantation is associated with “excellent transplant outcomes and is noninferior when compared with other etiologies of chronic liver disease,” they write.
Long-term risk rests on preventing alcohol relapse
Turning to AUD, the team notes that long-term outcomes among AH patients depend on the prevention of alcohol relapse, because alcohol use among these patients is directly linked to higher rates of mortality and decompensation.
The authors concede that the “definition of relapse remains a matter of contention, especially in the post-liver transplant population,” but they recommend complete abstinence for patients recovering from AH and define relapse as any use of alcohol.
Dr. Shetty explained that “often, the focus tends to be on the acute threats to a patient’s life, so their liver disease tends to be emphasized, and we often forget why patients present with the liver disease in the first place.”
He continued: “So we do our best to address the liver disease and not a lot gets done for the alcohol-use disorder that the patient may have in the background. The expectation is that, if the doctors help patients with their liver disease, the patients will learn that lesson on their own and stop drinking.”
Instead, Dr. Shetty and his colleagues advise, all patients should be screened for AUD and undergo surveillance with alcohol biomarkers monthly at first. Patients should also be referred to an addiction specialist, where some combination of psychotherapy, mutual support groups, and pharmacotherapy can be tailored to individual patient needs and access.
Multidisciplinary management, comprising hepatology, psychiatry, psychologist, nurse, and social worker consults, has shown “promising results in the management of AUD, improvement in liver disease, and decrease in health care burden,” the authors write, although “multidisciplinary clinics often carry financial and administrative barriers to broad application.”
Moreover, these interventions require a commitment from the patient, at least in the short term, to allow the establishment of a therapeutic relationship between the clinician and the patient and aid compliance over the longer term.
“Patients with AUD remain reluctant to pursue treatment,” the authors write, “and a large-scale effort to improve knowledge gaps in regard to AUD treatment and its success is needed, both from patients’ primary care providers and their consultants.”
Dr. Shetty explained that patient engagement is “probably the most challenging aspect of the disease, especially the alcohol use disorder part.”
This is partly because patients often lack insight, and alcohol addiction carries stigma and shame, as well as self-blame, he said, and so patients will “often delay pursuing any therapy ... even when they are sick.”
Dr. Shetty believes that reducing the stigma around alcohol addiction will require better education of patients and health care providers. To that end, he noted that the scientific literature now avoids the pejorative “alcoholic” and instead describes alcohol use as a disorder rather than having it define the patient.
“But this educational aspect is going to take a long time to really take effect, so from a provider perspective ... it is important to be open-minded when seeing these patients,” he said. This means not focusing on “the medical aspect alone but trying to really see the person who’s come to you for help and understand their motivations for pursing medical care.”
“Despite all these things, some patients may still find it very challenging and awkward. It takes several visits to really establish a rapport with them and get a sense of how to get them to share the challenging aspects of the disease,” Dr. Shetty added.
Multidisciplinary management for optimal outcomes
In a comment, Nancy S. Reau, MD, chair of hepatology, Rush Medical College, Chicago, agreed with the need to address both the risk for hepatic decompensation and AUD, the benefits of multidisciplinary management of patients, and the importance of patient engagement to successful outcomes.
“As hepatologists, we are often best at managing liver disease, but if you don’t also address the alcohol use disorder, the patient will not have the optimal outcome,” she said in an interview. “Most patients with severe AH have cirrhosis, [which] makes longitudinal follow-up imperative.”
“They are at risk for liver complications but also need aggressive nutritional support and management of their addiction,” she said. “As they improve, they can usually continue intensive treatment.”
Akhil Anand, MD, an addiction psychiatrist and co-director of the Multidisciplinary Alcohol Program at the Cleveland Clinic, also noted the increase in cases of alcohol-associated hepatitis from rising alcohol use.
The review “provides a timely, comprehensive, and impartial overview” of how to manage the condition, he said, as well as “how to treat co-occurring alcohol use disorder in this life-threatening situation.”
No funding was declared. The authors report no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF CLINICAL GASTROENTEROLOGY