Although it was originally used to predict mortality during surgery, it is now used to determine the prognosis, as well as the required strength of treatment and the necessity of liver transplantation.
In primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), some use a modified Child–Pugh score where the bilirubin references are changed to reflect the fact that these diseases feature high conjugated bilirubin levels.
[1] The surgeon and portal hypertension expert Charles Gardner Child (1908–1991) (with Turcotte) of the University of Michigan first proposed the scoring system in 1964 in a textbook on liver disease.
[3] It was modified by Pugh et al. in 1972 in a report on surgical treatment of bleeding from esophageal varices.
[4] They replaced Child's criterion of nutritional status with the prothrombin time or INR, and assigned scores of 1–3 to each variable.