Child–Pugh score

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Child–Turcotte–Pugh score

What it is
A simple tool doctors use to judge how serious chronic liver disease is and to guide treatment, including the need for liver transplantation. It was originally created to predict surgical risk but now helps with prognosis and planning care.

How it works
- It looks at five features of liver disease. Each feature is scored 1 to 3, where 3 means the problem is most severe.
- You use either prothrombin time or INR (not both) in the calculation.

The five measures (all scored 1–3)
- Bilirubin level (bilirubin values determine the points)
- Albumin level
- Prothrombin time or INR
- Ascites (fluid in the abdomen)
- Hepatic encephalopathy (brain function impairment)

Total score and classes
- Add the five scores to get a total.
- Based on the total, patients are placed into Class A, B, or C (less severe to most severe).

Notes
- In diseases like PSC and PBC, some use a modified version that adjusts bilirubin references.

Origin
- Proposed by Charles Gardner Child and Turcotte in 1964 and later revised by Pugh and colleagues in 1972, who substituted prothrombin time/INR for nutritional status and gave 1–3 points to each variable.