Incorporating dynamics for predicting poor outcome in acute liver failure patients.

Acute liver failure (ALF), also known as fulminant hepatic failure (FHF), is a devastating clinical syndrome with a high mortality of 60%-90%. An early and exact assessment of the severity of ALF together with prediction of its further development is critical in order to determine the further management of the patient. A number of prognostic models have been used for outcome prediction in ALF patients but they are mostly based on the variables measured at one time point, mostly at admission.

Prediction of poor outcome in patients with acute liver failure-systematic review of prediction models.

Introduction: Acute liver failure is a rare disease with high mortality and liver transplantation is the only life saving therapy. Accurate prognosis of ALF is crucial for proper intervention.

Aim: To identify and characterize newly developed prognostic models of mortality for ALF patients, assess study quality, identify important variables and provide recommendations for the development of improved models in the future.

A comparison of RIFLE with and without urine output criteria for acute kidney injury in critically ill patients.

Introduction: The Risk, Injury, Failure, Loss, and End-Stage Renal Disease (RIFLE) is a consensus-based classification system for diagnosing acute kidney insufficiency (AKI), based on serum creatinine (SCr) and urine output criteria (RIFLESCr+UO). The urine output criteria, however, are frequently discarded and many studies in the literature applied only the SCr criteria (RIFLESCr). We diagnosed AKI using both RIFLE methods and compared the effects on time to AKI diagnosis, AKI incidence and AKI severity.

A systematic review on prognostic indicators of acute on chronic liver failure and their predictive value for mortality.

Background: An early and proper diagnosis of acute on chronic liver failure (ACLF), together with the identification of indicators associated with disease severity is critical for outcome prediction and therapy.

Objective: To systematically identify and summarize prognostic indicators for patients with ACLF and to evaluate the predictive value of these indicators.

Methods: Embase and Ovid-Medline were searched for English-language articles.