LIRER score - a valuable tool to predict medium-long-term outcomes in hepatic cirrhosis decompensation.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The liver-renal-risk (LIRER) score was developed to predict adverse outcomes in cirrhotic patients with Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD)<18, helping the allocation to liver transplantation in this population. We aimed to assess its prognostic performance compared to other prognostic scores in first admission for hepatic cirrhosis decompensation. METHODS: Retrospective study that included patients admitted for initial decompensation of cirrhosis between January 2010 and February 2017. The LIRER, Child-Pugh (CP), MELD and MELD-sodium (MELD-Na) scores were calculated at admission. RESULTS: One-hundred and forty-six patients were included, 65.1% with MELD < 18. LIRER was a predictor of in-stay (AUC 0.70; p = .04), first-year (0.70; p < .001), two-years (0.72; p < .001) and overall mortality (0.70; p < .001), being the only score with an acceptable discriminating ability (AUC ≥ 0.70). Stratifying patients in MELD < 18 and ≥18, LIRER was found to be an independent predictor of first-year, two-years and overall-mortality only in MELD < 18 patients (AUC 0.67; 0.70; 0.72), being superior to all other scores predicting first-year mortality and the only with an AUC with a reasonable discriminating ability for predicting two-years and overall-mortality. The LIRER was also a predictor of 30-days hospital readmission (AUC 0.75; p < .001), independently of MELD, with patients with LIRER > 15.9 having a significantly higher probability to be readmitted at 30 days. CONCLUSIONS: The LIRER score is a predictor of first-year, two-years and overall-mortality in decompensated cirrhosis, particularly in patients with MELD < 18. LIRER is therefore an important tool to predict medium-long-term outcomes in this population. Besides, it allows predicting the 30-days readmission probability in overall patients, independently of MELD.