Determinants of prognosis in cirrhosis: a new outlook

Cirrhosis is a devasting disease with a well-recognized social and healthcare burden. Mortality is even higher if the course of disease is characterized by clinically significant portal hypertension and/or primary liver cancer. MELD represents a widely used scoring system able to assess the severity of liver disease or mortality risk of the patient as well as for patient’s allocation for liver transplantation. Recently, role and weight of some new, clinical, and non-biochemical indicators for the assessment of disease severity and prognosis, such as muscle alterations, frailty, and spontaneous portosystemic shunts (SPSS), have been described.