Clinical course and response to treatment of Cuban patients with primary biliary cholangitis. Institute of Gastroenterology, 2003-2020

Abstract

Introduction: Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is a cholestatic liver disease. The natural history and prognosis of PBC has been difficult to characterize. In Latin America and the Caribbean, there are very few research works on the subject. Objective: To describe the clinical and developmental characteristics and survival of patients with PBC. Material and Methods: Descriptive, longitudinal and ambispective study of patients older than 18 years with a diagnosis of PBC, treated at the Institute of Gastroenterology between September 2003 and January 2020. Demographic, clinical, biochemical and histological variables were evaluated from the data of medical records. For data processing, the statistical package SPSS version 21,0 was used. Results: A total of 45 patients were included, most of them female (95 %) and with symptomatic presentation (55,6 %). In addition, 71,1 % of the patients presented some complications, cirrhosis being the most frequent; in 28,8 % of the cirrhotic patients, there were complications secondary to liver injury, predominantly ascites, followed by variceal digestive bleeding, encephalopathy, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and bacterial infections associated with cirrhosis. Cumulative survival exceeded 95 % at five years. Conclusions: The survival of patients with PBC was high over time despite the high rate of complications.

Keywords

• colangitis biliar primaria, cirrosis, supervivencia, índice de complicaciones, presentación sintomática.