Current scoring methods inaccurate for who will relapse to alcohol post LT

SAN FRANCISCO — Current methods for predicting harmful alcohol relapse after liver transplantation accurately predict who will not relapse but have low positive predictive values, according to data presented at The Liver Meeting 2018.

“Cirrhosis due to alcohol is increasing in incidence and alcoholic hepatitis is an increasingly common indication for transplant,” Michael D. Voigt, MD, from the University of Iowa School of Medicine, said in his presentation. “Standard approach to selecting patients with alcohol use disorder for transplant is to use predictive factors to stratify the risk of alcohol relapse following transplant and then exclude those at the highest risk. Our aim was to evaluate the accuracy of clinical and objective scoring systems in predicting this relapse to harmful drinking.”