[Advances and unmet needs in clinical studies on liver cirrhosis]

Liver cirrhosis is the end stage of a variety of chronic liver diseases. In recent years, a number of clinical studies related to cirrhosis have provided new evidence for natural history of cirrhosis, etiologic treatment and management of complications. The present article evaluates the cirrhosis-related articles in this issue and summarizes the advances of cirrhosis staging, antiviral therapy in patients with decompensated hepatitis C cirrhosis, drug treatment of portal hypertension, terlipressin in the treatment of cirrhotic ascites, and the management of portal vein thrombosis. The unmet needs in cirrhosis-related clinical studies are also discussed.