Publication:

Alteration of cardiovascular autonomic activity in patients of alcoholic liver disease in North-East India: a hospital based study

Background In the present day world, alcohol consumption is one of the most common and serious public health problems. Alcoholism is a major risk factor for quite a large number of health complications, cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction being one of them. Sudden death in alcoholic liver disease (ALD) patients may be due to undiagnosed and untreated cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy.

Methods Five standard cardiovascular autonomic function tests were performed to assess the autonomic reactivity in 60 alcoholic liver disease patients at a tertiary care hospital in North-East India and the results were compared with that of 40 ages and sex matched healthy controls.

Results Out of the 60 ALD patients, 17 (i.e. 28%) have early parasympathetic damage (early PS damage), 25 (i.e., 42%) have definite parasympathetic damage and 18 (i.e. 30%) have a combined type of autonomic damage.

Conclusions The most affected function in our study is the heart rate response to lying to standing, 40% of the cases showed abnormal 30:15 ratio. Similarly, Blood pressure response to Handgrip test was found to be the least affected one with abnormality percentage of 13%. Present study did not find any pure sympathetic abnormality.