Assessment of scoring systems for acute-on-chronic liver failure at predicting short-term mortality in patients with alcoholic hepatitis

AIM: To assess the performance of proposed scores specific for acute-on-chronic liver failure in predicting short-term mortality among patients with alcoholic hepatitis. METHODS: We retrospectively collected data from 264 patients with clinically diagnosed alcoholic hepatitis from January to December 2013 at 21 academic hospitals in Korea. The performance for predicting short-term mortality was calculated for Chronic Liver Failure-Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (CLIF-SOFA), CLIF Consortium Organ Failure score (CLIF-C OFs), Maddrey’s discriminant function (DF), age, bilirubin, international normalized ratio and creatinine score (ABIC), Glasgow Alcoholic Hepatitis Score (GAHS), model for end-stage liver disease (MELD), and MELD-Na. RESULTS: Of 264 patients, 32 (12%) patients died within 28 d. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve of CLIF-SOFA, CLIF-C OFs, DF, ABIC, GAHS, MELD, and MELD-Na was 0.86 (0.81-0.90), 0.89 (0.84-0.92), 0.79 (0.74-0.84), 0.78 (0.72-0.83), 0.81 (0.76-0.86), 0.83 (0.78-0.88), and 0.83 (0.78-0.88), respectively, for 28-d mortality. The performance of CLIF-SOFA had no statistically significant differences for 28-d mortality. The performance of CLIF-C OFs was superior to that of DF, ABIC, and GAHS, while comparable to that of MELD and MELD-Na in predicting 28-d mortality. A CLIF-SOFA score of 8 had 78.1% sensitivity and 79.7% specificity, and CLIF-C OFs of 10 had 68.8% sensitivity and 91.4% specificity for predicting 28-d mortality. CONCLUSION: CLIF-SOFA and CLIF-C OF scores performed well, with comparable predictive ability for short-term mortality compared to the commonly used scoring systems in patients with alcoholic hepatitis.