ABSTRACT Aim The effect of treatment response to anticoagulant therapy on prognosis of patients with cirrhosis and portal vein thrombosis (PVT) remains unclear. Methods Forty‐one patients with cirrhosis and first PVT treated with intravenous anticoagulant therapy between January 2015 and April 2018 at 10 Japanese hospitals were included. Treatment response was defined based on change in size of PVT after anticoagulant therapy as the following: complete response (CR, 0%), partial response (PR, ≤ 50%), stable disease (SD, 51%–100%), and progressive disease (PD, ≥ 101%). CR and PR were combined as the effective group and SD and PD formed as the ineffective group. Results The median age was 69 years, and 56% of the patients had Child–Pugh class B. Overall, 5 (12%) achieved CR, 22 (54%) achieved PR, 12 (29%) had SD and 2 (5%) had PD. During a median follow‐up of 31.8 months from the date of assessment of treatment response, 17 patients died. The overall survival rates at 1‐ and 3‐year were 82.5% and 65.1%, respectively. In the multivariate analysis, the model for end‐stage liver disease‐Na score was significantly associated with overall survival, whereas treatment response was not significant. Twenty‐five patients experienced liver‐related events with hospitalization, and the 3‐year cumulative rate of liver‐related events was 63.9%. In the multivariate analysis, treatment response was significantly associated with liver‐related events. The 3‐year cumulative rates of liver‐related events were 56.7% and 75.5% in the effective and ineffective groups, respectively ( p = 0.008). Conclusions Among patients with cirrhosis, treatment response to anticoagulant therapy for PVT correlated with the incidence of liver‐related hospitalization events.
Maeda et al. (Tue,) studied this question.