Handgrip strength in prediction of sarcopenia in Chronic HCV patient

Abstract

Abstract Background HCV is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in the world and especially in Egypt. However, there is numerous complications to HCV infection (e.g. liver cirrhosis, ascites, portal hypertension, encephalopathy …. etc.) but there is multiple unseen complication (e.g. sarcopenia, loss of electrolytes, loss of protein …etc.) Objective To evaluate value of handgrip strength in assessment of sarcopenia in HCV related chronic liver disease patients Patients and Methods This study was conducted on 64 adult persons older than 18 years. They were randomly collected from the outpatient clinics at department of internal Medicine in Ain Shams University during the period from June 2018 to August 2019. Results In our study there was a great significance relation between handgrip strength and child score in evaluating nutritional status more than anthropometric parameter. Therefore, even that several methods to evaluate nutritional and functional capacity status in patients with cirrhosis have been tested, they have reported diverse results. Conclusion Our study we can conclude that HGS is a simple, easy to be applied and more accurate method in evaluation of sarcopenia in chronic HCV patients.