Model for End-Stage Liver Disease

src: www.livercancergenomics.com

The Model for End-Stage Liver Disease, or MELD, is a scoring system for assessing the severity of chronic liver disease. It was initially developed to predict mortality within three months of surgery in patients who had undergone a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) procedure, and was subsequently found to be useful in determining prognosis and prioritizing for receipt of a liver transplant. This score is now used by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and Eurotransplant for prioritizing allocation of liver transplants instead of the older Child-Pugh score.

Video Model for End-Stage Liver Disease

Determination

MELD uses the patient's values for serum bilirubin, serum creatinine, and the international normalized ratio for prothrombin time (INR) to predict survival. It is calculated according to the following formula:

MELD = 3.78×ln[serum bilirubin (mg/dL)] + 11.2×ln[INR] + 9.57×ln[serum creatinine (mg/dL)] + 6.43

MELD scores are reported as whole numbers, so the result of the equation above is rounded.

UNOS has made the following modifications to the score:

• If the patient has been dialyzed twice within the last 7 days, then the value for serum creatinine used should be 4.0 mg/dL
• Any value less than one is given a value of 1 (i.e. if bilirubin is 0.8 a value of 1.0 is used) to prevent the occurrence of scores below 0 (because any positive value below 1 the natural logarithm would yield a negative result)

The etiology of liver disease was subsequently removed from the model because it posed difficulties such as how to categorize patients with multiple causes of liver disease. Modification of the MELD score by excluding etiology of liver disease did not significantly affect the model's accuracy in predicting three-month survival.

Patients with a diagnosis of liver cancer will be assigned a MELD score based on how advanced the cancer is.

Maps Model for End-Stage Liver Disease

Interpretation

In interpreting the MELD Score in hospitalized patients, the 3 month observed mortality (considering 3437 adult liver transplant candidates with chronic liver disease who were added to the OPTN waiting list at 2A or 2B status between November, 1999, and December, 2001) is:

• 40 or more -- 71.3% observed mortality
• 30-39 -- 52.6% observed mortality
• 20-29 -- 19.6% observed mortality
• 10-19 -- 6.0% observed mortality
• <9 -- 1.9% observed mortality

Applications of MELD score:

• The best outcomes with TIPS occur among patients with a MELD score less than 14.
• Patients with MELD scores greater than 24 who are reasonable liver transplant candidates are probably best served by foregoing TIPS placement.

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History

MELD was originally developed at the Mayo Clinic by Dr. Patrick Kamath, and at that point was called the "Mayo End-stage Liver Disease" score. It was derived in a series of patients undergoing TIPS procedures. The original version also included a variable based on the underlying etiology (cause) of the liver disease. The score turned out to be predictive of prognosis in chronic liver disease in general, and-with some modifications-came to be applied as an objective tool in assigning need for a liver transplant. The etiology turned out to be relatively unimportant, and was also regarded as relatively subjective; it was therefore removed from the score.

MELD-Plus, a new score resulted from a collaboration between Massachusetts General Hospital and IBM was introduced in 2017.

src: bmjopen.bmj.com

See also

• Pediatric End-Stage Liver Disease
• Milan criteria
• Child-Pugh score
• MELD-Plus

src: www.esim.eg.net

References

src: slideplayer.com

External links

• Mobile friendly MELD score by MedWebApp
• Model for End-Stage Liver Disease Calculator by MDCalc
• Online calculator for MELD score/UNOS modification

Source of the article : Wikipedia