Abstract

Background: the present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Child-Pugh and MELD scores in predicting the prognosis of cirrhotic patients hospitalized in the hepato- gastroenterology department of Campus University Hospital.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional study with retrospective and prospective data collection over a 13-year period, based on the medical records of cirrhotic patients hospitalized in the HGE department of Campus University Hospital and including clinical and biological data enabling calculation of Child-Pugh and MELD scores.
Results: 443 patients were included, 69.1% of whom were male. The mean age of patients was 50±14 years. Cirrhosis was decompensated in 419 patients (94.5%). Edematous-ascitic decompensation was the main complication of cirrhosis in 85.6%. Mortality in our study was 32.7%. Median survival was 23 months. For a threshold value of 9, the Child-Pugh score predicted mortality with a sensitivity of 68.97%, a specificity of 55.03% and an area under the ROC curve of 0.66. The area under the ROC curve, for a threshold of 19 for the MELD score, was 0.63. At 03 months, there was no statistically significant difference between the two scores (p=0.506).
Conclusion: Child-Pugh and MELD scores performed similarly in predicting mortality in cirrhotic patients. Both scores remain useful tools in low-resource settings.

Keywords

cirrhosis, prognosis, Child-Pugh, MELD, Togo