A new scoring system could help identify people with alcoholic hepatitis (AH) who are at high risk of short-term mortality, according to a study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings..

Camilla A. Keser, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues developed a scoring system to predict 30-day mortality in a derivational cohort of 266 consecutive adults with hypertension from the same academic center from January 1, 1998 to December 31, 2018.. The score was externally validated in a multicentre retrospective cohort..

The researchers found that the 30-day mortality rate in the derivational cohort was 19.2 percent.. Age, blood urea nitrogen, albumin, bilirubin, and international normalized ratio were significantly associated with mortality in a multivariate analysis.. The Alcoholic Hepatitis Mortality Index (MIAAH), which included these variables, reached a C-statistic of 0.86.

Comparison of accuracy with existing predictive models (Maddry discriminant function and End-stage liver disease model) showed that MIAAH achieved the highest concordance, the difference was statistically significant. In a validation cohort of 249 patients, the C-statistic for MIAAH decreased to 0.73; the model significantly outperformed the Maddry discriminant function, but not the end-stage liver disease model..

“Although the optimal process may involve a combination of models, MIAAH can be an important tool in helping our patients,” the co-author said in a statement..

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