A Better Way to Predict Mortality in Liver Transplantation?

Altering the MELD score to reflect serum sodium levels might improve the score’s ability to predict mortality in patients awaiting liver transplantation.

The Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) scoring system is used to allocate livers to patients awaiting transplantation, but MELD scoring has limited prognostic accuracy in certain subpopulations, such as patients with low serum sodium levels. Previous studies have suggested that hyponatremia is predictive of mortality in cirrhotic patients, because hypervolemic hyponatremia is indicative of progressive hepatic dysfunction (Dig Liver Dis 2000; 32:605). Does altering the MELD score to reflect serum sodium levels improve the score’s ability to predict mortality in patients awaiting liver transplantation?

Using the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network database, researchers performed a retrospective study of 14,130 adults who were a…

Reviewing Author

Atif Zaman, MD, MPH

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose

Atif Zaman, MD, MPH

Disclosures

Nothing to disclose