A novel prognostic model based on serum levels of total bilirubin and creatinine early after liver transplantation.

Background/aim: We aim to evaluate the impact of early renal dysfunction (ERD), early allograft dysfunction (EAD) on post-transplant mortality, and further explore a simple and accurate model to predict prognosis.
Patients: A total of 161 adult patients who underwent liver transplantation for benign end-stage liver diseases were enrolled in the retrospective study. Another 38 patients were used for model validation.
Results: Poor patient survival was associated with ERD or EAD. A post-transplant model for predicting mortality (PMPM) based on serum levels of total bilirubin and creatinine at 24-h post-transplantation was then established according to multivariate logistic regression. At 3 months, 6 months and 1 year, the area under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of PMPM score at 24-h post-transplantation (0.876, 0.878 and 0.849, respectively) were significantly higher than those of pre-transplant model for end-stage liver diseases (MELD) score (0.673, 0.674 and 0.618, respectively) or the post-transplant MELD score at 24-h post-transplantation (0.787, 0.787 and 0.781, respectively) (P<0.05). Patients with PMPM score <or=-1.4 (low-risk group, n=114) achieved better survival than those with PMPM score >-1.4 (high-risk group, n=47) (P<0.001). The patients in the high-risk group showed a relatively good outcome if their PMPM scores decreased to <or=-1.4 at post-transplant day 7. The subsequent validation study showed that PMPM functioned with a predictive accuracy of 100%.
Conclusion: The PMPM score could effectively predict short- and medium-term mortality in liver transplant recipients.