Incidence, laboratory detection and prognostic relevance of hypoxic hepatitis in cardiogenic shock

Background Despite the improvement of therapeutic options for patients in acute myocardial infarction (AMI), cardiogenic shock (CS) remains a complication with high mortality rates. Organ failure centrally determines the prognosis of these high-risk patients. Aim of the current study was to assess the incidence of hypoxic hepatitis (HH) in CS, its laboratory detection evaluating novel and established biomarkers and to estimate the prognostic relevance of HH in current clinical practice. Methods In 172 patients with CS complicating AMI, blood samples were collected at admission and after 1 day as prespecified subanalysis of the intra-aortic balloon pumping IABP-SHOCK II trial. Classic parameters of HH were measured in addition to argininosuccinate synthase 1 and sulfotransferase isoform SULT2A1 was determined as new biomarker using standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. All-cause mortality at 30 days was used for outcome assessment. Results The overall mortality rate was 40%. The incidence of HH with an increase of aminotransferase levels to be 20 times above the upper normal level was 18%. Patients with HH had a distinctly higher 30-day mortality rate compared to patients without HH (68 vs. 34%; p < 0.001). After multivariable adjustment aspartate-aminotransferase (ASAT) remained an independent predictor of 30-day mortality together with serum lactate and serum creatinine, while the new biomarkers failed to predict outcome. Comparing different liver markers using receiver operating characteristic analysis, ASAT showed the highest area under the curve for the prediction of outcome. Conclusions HH occurs frequently in CS and is associated with particular poor outcome. As conventional biomarker, ASAT is the strongest laboratory predictor of outcome.