Association of various risk factors with hypocalcemia in decompensated liver disease of viral origin.

Objective: To determine the association of various factors with hypocalcaemia in individuals with decompensated cirrhosis with chronic viral hepatitis etiology. Study Design: Cross Sectional Observational Study. Setting: Department of Internal Medicine, Nishtar Medical University and Hospital Multan. Period: Six Months Extending from July, 2019 to December, 2019. Material & Methods: Sample Size: One hundred and seventy six patients were selected. Results: Among 176 study cases, 97 (55.1%) were male patients while 79 (44.9%) were females. Mean age of our study cases was noted to be 48.85 ± 8.13 years. Of these 176 study cases, 70 (39.7%) were from rural and 106 (60.3%) were urban background. Out of them, 124 (70.5%) were from poor families and remaining 52(29.5%) were middle class. Mean serum calcium level calculated was found to be 7.24 ± 0.87 mg/dl. Hypocalcemia was noted in 152 (86.4%) of our cases. It was seen that there was significant association among gender and hypocalcemia (p-value 0.000), poor socioeconomic status and hypocalcemia (p-value 0.014), obesity and hypocalcemia (p-value 0.009), duration of disease and hypocalcemia (p-value 0.001) treatment status and hypocalcemia (p-value 0.001), viral type with hypocalcemia (p-value 0.000). However no significant relation was discovered among hypocalcemia and age of patient and residential status of patients. Conclusion: We have noticed a very high distribution of hypocalcemia among decompensated cirrhotic having chronic viral hepatitis etiology. We also discovered that hypocalcemia had significant association with female sex, low socioeconomic fragment of society, longer duration of disease, untreated patients and hepatitis C related cirrhosis.