Liver cirrhosis can influence the outcomes of several traditional techniques currently used to determine nutritional status. The objective of the current study was to contrast the traditional two-compartment model (subjective global assessment and anthropometry and blood tests) of nutritional assessment with a multicompartmental model (body composition analysis) in patients with cirrhosis.

The authors recruited 79 patients and 17 control subjects. All these participants then undergone subjective global assessment, anthropometry and blood tests, and body composition analysis. The two chief compartments were body cell mass and total body fat. Well-nourished or moderately or severely malnourished were the parameters for the classification of each method.

The results divulged that 31.6% patients were malnourished according to the subjective global assessment, 6.3% with Childs class A cirrhosis, 34.5% with class B, and 72.2% with class C, whereas 30.4% were malnourished according to the traditional model, 15.6% in the Childs A group, 27.6% in B, and 61.1% in C. Moreover, based on the multicompartmental model, 60.1% were malnourished, 34.4% in Childs A, 69% in B, and 94.4% in C. In addition, evaluation by multicompartmental model augmented the prevalence of malnutrition by more than 60% in Childs classes A and B patients and by more than 20% in Childs class C patients.

Thus, it can be postulated that methods of traditional nutritional evaluation did not consider the prevalence or severity of malnutrition in patients with cirrhosis, which was more evident in Childs class A and B patients.

Source: Figueiredo FA, Perez RM, Freitas MM, Kondo M. Comparison of three methods of nutritional assessment in liver cirrhosis: subjective global assessment, traditional nutritional parameters, and body composition analysis. J Gastroenterol. 2006 May;41(5):476-82.