Model for end-stage liver disease: end of the first decade.

The Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) score is the basis for allocation of liver allografts for transplantation in the United States. The MELD score, as an objective scale of disease severity, is also used in the management of patients with chronic liver disease in the nontransplant setting. Several models have been proposed to improve the MELD score. The authors believe that the MELD score is, by design, continually evolving and lends itself to continued refinement and improvement to serve as a metric to optimize organ allocation in the future.