New Algorithm Rules Out Acute-on-chronic Liver Failure Development within 28 Days from Acute Decompensation of Cirrhosis

Background and Aims:Approximately 10%of patients with acute decompensated(AD)cirrhosis develop acute-on-chronic liver failure(ACLF)within 28 days.Such cases have high mortality and are difficult to predict.Therefore,we aimed to establish and validate an algorithm to identify these patients on hospitalization.Methods:Hospitalized patients with AD who developed ACLF within 28 days were considered pre-ACLF.Organ dysfunction was defined accord-ing to the chronic liver failure-sequential organ failure as-sessment(CLIF-SOFA)criteria,and proven bacterial infec-tion was taken to indicate immune system dysfunction.A retrospective multicenter cohort and prospective one were used to derive and to validate the potential algorithm,re-spectively.A miss rate of<5%was acceptable for the calcu-lating algorithm to rule out pre-ACLF.Results:In the deri-vation cohort(n=673),46 patients developed ACLF within 28 days.Serum total bilirubin,creatinine,international normalized ratio,and present proven bacterial infection at admission were associated with the development of ACLF.AD patients with≥2 organ dysfunctions had a higher risk for pre-ACLF patients[odds ratio=16.58195%confidence interval:(4.271-64.363),p<0.001].In the derivation co-hort,67.5%of patients(454/673)had≤1 organ dysfunction and two patients(0.4%)were pre-ACLF,with a miss rate of 4.3%(missed/total,2/46).In the validation cohort,65.9%of patients(914/1388)had≤1 organ dysfunction,and four(0.3%)of them were pre-ACLF,with a miss rate of 3.4%(missed/total,4/117).Conclusions:AD patients with≤1 organ dysfunction had a significantly lower risk of developing ACLF within 28 days of admission and could be safely ruled out with a pre-ACLF miss rate of<5%.