Portacaval anastomosis in patients with liver cirrhosis. Study of prognostic factors of survival by multivariate analysis

Seventeen preoperative variables were collected in order to assess their prognostic value on survival in 82 cirrhotic patients who underwent a portosystemic shunt for ruptured esophageal varices. Univariate analysis showed that the presence of encephalopathy, bad nutritional status, elevated serum bilirubin, low serum albumin, the presence of ascites and Child-Turcotte's or Child-Pugh's C class were significantly associated with a reduction of long-term survival. Multivariate analysis according to the Cox model showed that only encephalopathy and nutritional status were independently associated with survival. Six survival curves were proposed to estimate the survival probability with these 2 preoperative data; encephalopathy had a predominant effect on survival during the first 5 years after surgery.