Huo TI et al. - In a trial to investigate the prognostic role of MELD-Na for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), it was shown that the MELD-Na score is a feasible and independent prognostic predictor for both short- and long-term outcome predictions in pts with HCC Methods
535 unselected HCC pts were prospectively enrolled to evaluate the performance of MELD-Na
Results
The MELD-Na was better than model for end-stage liver disease in predicting 6-month mortality by comparing the area under receiver operating characteristic curve
MELD-Na, but not model for end-stage liver disease, was an independent predictor associated with 6-month mortality in multivariate logistic regression analysis
In the survival analysis, MELD-Na independently predicted mortality, with an additional risk of 4.3% per unit increment of the score
Pts with MELD-Na scores between 10 and 20 and scores >20 had 2.1-fold and 7.5-fold risk of mortality, respectively, compared with pts with a score <10 in the Cox proportional hazard model