Intra-abdominal pressure and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score: is there a correlation?

The aim of this study was evaluating the correlation between intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) [1] in critically ill patients admitted to our ICU.

Reported are the preliminary results of a prospective study. During a 10-month period 18 patients consecutively admitted with secondary or tertiary abdominal sepsis were enrolled in this study and divided into two groups: in the first group five patients underwent abdominal surgery with open laparostomy before ICU admission; in the second group 13 patient were treated without surgical intervention. The SOFA score and IAP were recorded once every 8 hours, for the first 3 days from admission, for a total of 162 records. The IAP was measured with the Kron open system single measurement technique [2]. The Pearson correlation coefficient between the IAP and SOFA score was calculated for all patients and separately for the laparostomy and the nonlaparostomy groups.

No evident correlation has been found between IAP and SOFA score in the group of all patients. A Pearson linear correlation of 0.46 occurred in the nonlaparostomized group. A less significant value in the laparostomized group was found but with an inversed correlation.

These preliminary results suggest that a correlation between IAP and SOFA could be found in selected critically ill groups.