Development and validation of a scoring system for in-hospital mortality following band ligation in esophageal variceal bleeding

Objectives

We aimed to develop and validate a simple scoring system to predict in-hospital mortality after endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) for esophageal variceal bleeding.

Methods

Data from a 13-year study involving 46 Japanese institutions were split into development (initial 7 years) and validation (last 6 years) cohorts. The study subjects were patients hospitalized for esophageal variceal bleeding and treated with EVL. Variable selection was performed using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression, targeting in-hospital all-cause mortality as the outcome. We developed the Hospital Outcome Prediction following Endoscopic Variceal Ligation (HOPE-EVL) score from β coefficients of multivariate logistic regression and assessed its discrimination and calibration.

Results

The study included 980 patients: 536 in the development cohort and 444 in the validation cohort. In-hospital mortality was 13.6% and 10.1% for the respective cohorts. The scoring system used five variables: systolic blood pressure (<80 mmHg: 2 points), Glasgow Coma Scale (≤12: 1 point), total bilirubin (≥5 mg/dL: 1 point), creatinine (≥1.5 mg/dL: 1 point), and albumin (<2.8 g/dL: 1 point). The risk groups (low: 0–1, middle: 2–3, high: ≥4) in the validation cohort corresponded to observed and predicted mortality probabilities of 2.0% and 2.5%, 19.0% and 22.9%, and 57.6% and 71.9%, respectively. In this cohort, the HOPE-EVL score demonstrated excellent discrimination ability (area under the curve [AUC] 0.890; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.850–0.930) compared with the Model for End-stage Liver Disease score (AUC 0.853; 95% CI 0.794–0.912) and the Child–Pugh score (AUC 0.798; 95% CI 0.727–0.869).

Conclusions

The HOPE-EVL score practically and effectively predicts in-hospital mortality. This score could facilitate the appropriate allocation of resources and effective communication with patients and their families.