- Poster presentation
- Open Access
ICU scoring systems: which one to use in patients with sepsis?
- Published: 27 October 2011
Keywords
- Septic Patient
- Sequential Organ Failure Assessment
- Standardize Mortality Ratio
- Simplify Acute Physiology Score
- Chronic Health Evaluation
Introduction
Disease-severity scoring systems have been developed for stratification of ICU patients. These systems have been tested and validated in various general medical and surgical ICU patients. However, the validity and efficacy of these systems, especially the newer generation, has not been assessed in patients with sepsis, which is the commonest indication for admission to a medical ICU. Hence, we conducted this study to assess the performance of various ICU scoring systems - Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II, III, IV; Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS) II, III; Mortality Prediction Model (MPM) II0, III0; and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores - in septic patients admitted to a medical ICU.
Methods
A prospective, observational study was conducted in a tertiary care medical ICU and consecutive patients fulfilling the diagnostic criteria for sepsis during the first 24 hours of ICU admission were included over a 2-year period. Data related to patient demographics and that required to compute various scores were recorded. Predicted mortality was calculated using original regression formulas. The standardized mortality ratio (SMR) was computed for mortality prediction. Calibration was assessed by calculating the Lemeshow-Hosmer goodness-of-fit C-statistic. Discrimination was assessed by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curves. ICU mortality was the primary outcome measure.
Results
Comparison of the actual and predicted mortality rates for the various scoring systems
Variable | Actual mortality | Predicted mortality | SMR |
|---|---|---|---|
APACHE II | 0.244 | 0.296 | 0.824 |
APACHE IV | 0.244 | 0.206 | 1.18 |
SAPS II | 0.244 | 0.297 | 0.822 |
SAPS III | 0.244 | 0.249 | 0.98 |
MPM II0 | 0.244 | 0.314 | 0.777 |
MPM III0 | 0.244 | 0.216 | 1.13 |
Area under the curve for predicting ICU mortality for various scoring systems
Scoring system | AUC | 95% CI | Cut-off | Sensitivity (%) | Specificity (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
APACHE II | 0.880 | 0.845 to 0.914 | >18.5 | 86.9 | 75.8 |
APACHE III | 0.880 | 0.847 to 0.914 | >63.5 | 82.2 | 70.4 |
APACHE IV | 0.882 | 0.848 to 0.916 | >17.7 | 83.2 | 74 |
SAPS II | 0.849 | 0.808 to 0.890 | >41.5 | 82.2 | 70.4 |
SAPS III | 0.873 | 0.838 to 0.907 | >53.5 | 85 | 72.2 |
MPM II0 | 0.849 | 0.807 to 0.891 | >30.1 | 77.6 | 76.1 |
MPM III0 | 0.872 | 0.835 to 0.909 | >18.7 | 81.3 | 77.9 |
SOFA | 0.889 | 0.857 to 0.922 | >5.5 | 86.9 | 79.2 |
Conclusion
Overall, the newer generation of scoring systems performed better than their older counterparts and was more accurate. Older scoring systems had a tendency to overpredict mortality. However, all the scores tested had good efficacy and the difference in efficacy was not statistically significant.
Authors’ Affiliations
Copyright
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
