Clinical assessment of prognosis in patients with fulminant hepatitis

Assessment of the prognosis of fulminant hepatitis was made from clinical findings at the time of the appearance of hepatic encephalopathy using five living and ten fatal cases of fulminant hepatitis. Those patients who died tended to be old, especially in the subacute type of fulminant hepatitis, and frequently had disseminated intravascular coagulation. Prognosis scoring by assessing clinical findings in these patients was calculated during their clinical courses. From differences in scores, the treatment performed following the occurrence of hepatic encephalopathy was judged to be effective in some of the surviving patients. Other patients died, however, because of the difficulty of sufficiently controlling complications. The prognosis scoring at the time of the appearance of encephalopathy was valid for female patients who survived. Clinical evaluation of this scoring method will be further evaluated with more cases in the future.