It was initially developed to predict mortality within three months of surgery in patients who had undergone a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) procedure,[1] and was subsequently found to be useful in determining prognosis and prioritizing for receipt of a liver transplant.
Modification of the MELD score by excluding etiology of liver disease did not significantly affect the model's accuracy in predicting three-month survival.
[citation needed] In interpreting the MELD Score in hospitalized patients, the 3 month observed mortality (considering 3,437 adult liver transplant candidates with chronic liver disease who were added to the OPTN waiting list at 2A or 2B status between November, 1999, and December, 2001) is:[6] Applications of MELD score include: MELD was originally developed at the Mayo Clinic by Dr. Patrick Kamath, and at that point was called the "Mayo End-stage Liver Disease" score.
[3] The successor of MELD, an advanced scoring system, made by collaboration between Massachusetts General Hospital and IBM, called MELD-Plus was introduced in 2017.
[7] The United Network for Organ Sharing proposed that MELD-Na score (an extension of MELD) may better rank candidates based on their risk of pre-transplant mortality and is projected to save 50-60 lives total per year.
[8] Furthermore, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008, estimated that using MELD-Na instead of MELD would save 90 lives for the period from 2005 to 2006.