Meld Scores

Can anybody help me to understand the Meld score better.  I'd like to know how the chart runs...I heard it was 1-60.  Is this true?  I am not sure what is better, a low or high Meld number.  I thought the lower the number the worse the disease but after reading some posts, I'm a little confused.  I know some hospitals will not do a transplant on somebody with a low Meld and others will.   Is the patient with the lower Meld healthier or sicker??  

[Rachel_R]

The Model for End-Stage Liver Disease, or MELD is used to predict survival rate. The higher the score the less chance of survival, the higher the mortality rate. In interpreting the MELD Score in hospitalized patients, the 3 month mortality is:

    * 40 or more — 71.3% mortality
    * 30–39 — 52.6% mortality
    * 20–29 — 19.6% mortality
    * 10–19 — 6.0% mortality
    * <9 — 1.9% mortality

[Bia918]

Thanks for your response Rachel_R.  
Hospitalized patients?  Is the interpretation different if the person is not hospitalized?
So, let me see if I understand this right....Are you saying that a person with a 14 MELD score would have a six percentage chance of dying within 3 mos?  If that is the case then the MELD is not actually giving a prognosis on the actual average amount of time the person has to live.  Is this true.  Did I understand that correctly?  Sorry my brain is a bit fried lately!