2 METHODS
2.1 Study design
The electronic medical data of hospitalized patients with alcohol- or HBV-related cirrhosis, from January 2014 to January 2021, were reviewed retrospectively. The exclusion criteria were: (1) other underlying liver diseases (such as autoimmune liver disease), other viral-related cirrhosis, Wilson’s disease, primary biliary cirrhosis, and concomitant alcohol abuse and HBV infection; (2) carcinoma (excluding HCC); and (3) severe cardiac or pulmonary diseases. Sample size of patients was estimated using an online software (Power and Sample Size Calculation; HyLown Consulting LLC, Atlanta, GA, USA).
The ethics review committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Pharmaceutical University reviewed and approved the study (ethics review number: 2021-10). The need for patient informed consent was waived as retrospective anonymized data was used in this study.