Liver cirrhosis and risk of intracerebral hemorrhage: a 9-year follow-up study.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate the risk of future intracerebral hemorrhage development in patients with liver cirrhosis. METHODS Data were collected from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. The study cohort included 948 patients with liver cirrhosis diagnosed in 1999 and 9480 age- and sex-matched patients of the same year. All patients were tracked from their index visits for 9 years. RESULTS Intracerebral hemorrhage developed in 1.3% of patients with liver cirrhosis and 1.0% of patients in the comparison cohort during the follow-up period. Log-rank test analysis showed no significant difference between the 2 cohorts (P=0.39). A stratified Cox proportional regression model showed an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.62 (95% CI, 0.85 to 3.10) for patients with liver cirrhosis to develop intracerebral hemorrhage compared with patients without liver cirrhosis. CONCLUSIONS Patients with liver cirrhosis had a similar intracerebral hemorrhage incidence rate but a trend of increased risk for intracerebral hemorrhage compared with the comparison cohort during the 9-year follow-up period.