Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Hospitalizations for Alcoholic Hepatitis or Cirrhosis in Alberta, Canada.

Abstract Background and aims COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and restrictions had significant disruption to patient care. We aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on hospitalizations of patients with alcoholic and non-alcoholic cirrhosis as well as alcoholic hepatitis (AH) in Alberta, Canada. Methods We used validated international clinical classification (ICD-9 and ICD-10) coding algorithms to identify liver-related hospitalizations for non-alcoholic cirrhosis, alcoholic cirrhosis, and AH in the province of Alberta between March 2018 and September 2020. We used the provincial inpatient discharge and laboratory databases to identify our cohorts. We used elevated ALT or AST, elevated international normalized ratio (INR) or bilirubin to identify AH patients. We compared COVID-19 restrictions (April-September 2020) to prior study periods. Joinpoint regression was used to evaluate the temporal trends among the three cohorts. Results We identified 2,916 hospitalizations for non-alcoholic cirrhosis, 2,318 hospitalizations for alcoholic cirrhosis, and 1,408 AH hospitalizations during our study time. The in-hospital mortality rate was stable in relation to the pandemic for alcoholic cirrhosis and AH. However, non-alcoholic cirrhosis patients had lower in-hospital mortality rate post March 2020 (8.5% vs. 11.5%, p=0.033). There was a significant increase in average monthly admission in the AH cohort (22.1/ 10,000 admissions during the pandemic vs. 11.6/10,000 admissions prior to March 2020, p Conclusion Pre- and during COVID-19 monthly admission rates were stable for non-alcoholic and alcoholic cirrhosis, however, there was a significant increase in AH admissions. As alcohol sales surged during the pandemic, future impact on alcoholic liver disease could be detrimental.