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Acute-on-chronic liver failure—no longer an entity without definition

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Although clinicians instinctively recognise acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF), heretofore we have had no way of accurately studying the syndrome, as no definition of this entity existed. A consortium of European centres has finally offered a definition of ACLF and proposed a prognostic index based upon easily obtained features of patients with decompensated cirrhosis.

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Figure 1: Accuracy (AUROC curves) of the CLIF-C ACLFs (brown), MELD score (green), MELD-sodium score (blue), and Child–Pugh score (maroon) for predicting 28-day mortality in patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure in the CANONIC study.

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  1. Hume-Lee Transplant Center of Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, 23298, VA, USA

    R. Todd Stravitz

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  1. R. Todd Stravitz
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Correspondence to R. Todd Stravitz.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Stravitz, R. Acute-on-chronic liver failure—no longer an entity without definition. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 11, 580–581 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2014.161

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