Definition of PELD

PELD: Pediatric End-Stage Liver Disease. A disease severity scoring system for children under 18 years of age, designed to improve the organ allocation in transplantation based on the severity of liver disease rather than time on the waiting list. The PELD score is based on both laboratory data and growth data. The laboratory values are a patient's albumin, bilirubin, and international normalized ratio, or INR (a measure of blood-clotting time). These values are used together with the patient's degree of growth failure to determine the PELD score. The adult version of PELD is called MELD.