Nomogram prediction of individual prognosis of patients with acute-on-chronic hepatitis B liver failure

Background: The current definitions and etiologies of acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) are clearly very different between East and West.
Aims: This study aimed to develop an effective prognostic nomogram for acute-on-chronic hepatitis B liver failure (ACHBLF) as defined by the Asia Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL).
Methods: The nomogram was based on a retrospective study of 573 patients with ACHBLF, defined according to the APASL, at the Beijing Ditan Hospital. The results were validated using a bootstrapped approach to correct for bias in two external cohorts, including an APASL ACHBLF cohort (10 hospitals, N = 329) and an EASL-CLIF ACHBLF cohort (Renji Hospital, N = 300).
Results: Multivariate analysis of the derivation cohort for survival analysis helped identify the independent factors as age, total bilirubin, albumin, international normalized ratio, and hepatic encephalopathy, which were included in the nomogram. The predictive value of nomogram was the strongest compared with CLIF-C ACLF, MELD and MELD-Na and similar to COSSH-ACLF in both the derivation and prospective validation cohorts with APASL ACHBLF, but the CLIF-C ACLF was better in the EASL-CLIF ACHBLF cohort.
Conclusions: The proposed nomogram could accurately estimate individualized risk for the short-term mortality of patients with ACHBLF as defined by APASL.