Simple translational equations to compare illness severity scores in intensive care trials

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 885.e1-885.e8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine G. Schneider ◽  
Miklós Lipcsey ◽  
Michael Bailey ◽  
David V. Pilcher ◽  
Rinaldo Bellomo
2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 378-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle E. Kho ◽  
Ellen McDonald ◽  
Paul W. Stratford ◽  
Deborah J. Cook

Background Despite widespread use of the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II), its interrater reliability has not been well studied. Objective To determine interrater reliability of APACHE II scores among 1 intensive care nurse and 2 research clerks. Methods In a prospective, blinded, observational study, 3 raters collected APACHE II scores on 37 consecutive patients in a medical-surgical intensive care unit. One research clerk was blinded to the study’s start date to minimize observer bias. The nurse and the other research clerk were blinded to each other’s scores and did not communicate with the first research clerk about the study. The data analyst was blinded to the identity and source of all 3 raters’ scores. Intraclass correlation coefficients and 95% confidence intervals were assessed. Results Mean (standard deviation) APACHE II scores were 21.8 (9.2) for the nurse, 20.4 (7.7) for research clerk 1, and 20.5 (8.1) for research clerk 2. Among the 3 raters, the intraclass correlation coefficient (95% confidence interval) was 0.90 (0.84, 0.94) for the APACHE II total score. Within APACHE II score components, the highest reliability was for age (0.98 [0.97, 0.99]), with lower reliabilities for the Chronic Health Index (0.64 [0.50, 0.80]) and the verbal component of the Glasgow Coma Scale (0.40 [0.20, 0.60]). Results were similar between pairs of raters. Conclusions Use of trained nonmedical personnel to collect illness severity scores for clinical, research, and administrative purposes is reasonable. This method could be used to assess reliability of other illness severity scores.


2017 ◽  
Vol 158 (32) ◽  
pp. 1259-1268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcell Szabó ◽  
Noémi Kanász ◽  
Katalin Darvas ◽  
János Gál

Abstract: Introduction: Intensive care units are favourable environment for infections, many of them are caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria. Aim: Identifying risk factors of ICU-acquired multiresistant infections. Method: We performed observational study on two academic intensive care units (a multidisciplinary and a surgical ICU) between 01/09/2014 and 30/11/2015. Patients with a first infection caused by predefined organisms (P. aeruginosa, E. coli, K. pneumoniae, A. baumanni, S. aureus, S. epidermidis, E. faecium, E. faecalis or their multiresistant homologues) verified ≥48 h following admission were divided into two groups according to multiresistant (MRB) and non-multiresistant (n-MRB) bacteria. Prevalence of diabetes, COPD, smoking, alcoholism, acute surgery, malignancy were recorded. Their role was evaluated on pooled populations. Illness severity was marked by SAPS-II at admission and SOFA-score on day of positive culture. We also noted the length of stay, mechanical ventilation, antibiotic treatment. Results: Multidisciplinary ICU had 627, the surgical 1096 admissions. On the formal unit MRB group had 41 (48.1%), the n-MRB had 38 (51.9%) patients. On the latter unit 31 (54.4%) and 26 (45.6%) patients were involved. Smoking favoured multiresistant bacteria (RR 1.44 CI95% 1.04–2.0; p = 0.048). In case of malignancies n-MRB were more prominent (RR of MRB 0.68 CI95% 0.47–0.97; p = 0.026), other comorbidities had no significant impact. Illness severity scores did not differ at any of the ICUs. Preceding length of stay, days on mechanical ventilation or on antibiotics were similar in each group on both ICUs. Conclusion: Smoking was revealed as a risk factor for MRB on our ICUs. We were not able to identify time-dependent risk factors. Orv Hetil. 2017; 158(32): 1259–1268.


1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas K. Richardson ◽  
William O. Tarnow-Mordi

Measurement of illness severity has found increasing use in adult and pediatric intensive care research over the past decade. The development of illness severity indices for neonatal intensive care has lagged because birth weight has served as an excellent proxy for illness severity. However, a number of recent studies have shown marked variation in survival and morbidity among neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) despite birth weight adjustment, making clear the need for neonatal illness severity scoring. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of the 4 types of scoring systems used in adult intensive care—diagnosis, risk-factor, therapeutic, and physiological—and review their applications in adult and pediatric ICU research. Criteria for score design, as well as standards for validation and performance, are enumerated. The 30 neonatal scores fall in 5 major categories: obstetric risk, general use pediatric scores, predictors of developmental outcome, bronchopulmonary dysplasia risk, and acute mortality risk. Few have been adequately validated on large, concurrent independent samples. The most promising scores are those that measure acute physiological derangement on admission. Potential applications for these new illness severity scores are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahuldeb Sarkar ◽  
Christopher Martin ◽  
Heather Mattie ◽  
Judy Wawira Gichoya ◽  
David J. Stone ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTBackgroundDespite wide utilisation of severity scoring systems for case-mix determination and benchmarking in the intensive care unit, the possibility of scoring bias across ethnicities has not been examined. Recent guidelines on the use of illness severity scores to inform triage decisions for allocation of scarce resources such as mechanical ventilation during the current COVID-19 pandemic warrant examination for possible bias in these models. We investigated the performance of three severity scoring systems (APACHE IVa, OASIS, SOFA) across ethnic groups in two large ICU databases in order to identify possible ethnicity-based bias.MethodData from the eICU Collaborative Research Database and the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care were analysed for score performance in Asians, African Americans, Hispanics and Whites after appropriate exclusions. Discrimination and calibration were determined for all three scoring systems in all four groups.FindingsWhile measurements of discrimination -area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) -were significantly different among the groups, they did not display any discernible systematic patterns of bias. In contrast, measurements of calibration -standardised mortality ratio (SMR) -indicated persistent, and in some cases significant, patterns of difference between Hispanics and African Americans versus Asians and Whites. The differences between African Americans and Whites were consistently statistically significant. While calibrations were imperfect for all groups, the scores consistently demonstrated a pattern of over-predicting mortality for African Americans and Hispanics.InterpretationThe systematic differences in calibration across ethnic groups suggest that illness severity scores reflect bias in their predictions of mortality.FundingLAC is funded by the National Institute of Health through NIBIB R01 EB017205. There was no specific funding for this study.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Luo ◽  
Zhiyu Wang ◽  
Cong Wang

Abstract Background Prognostication is an essential tool for risk adjustment and decision making in the intensive care units (ICUs). In order to improve patient outcomes, we have been trying to develop a more effective model than Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II to measure the severity of the patients in ICUs. The aim of the present study was to provide a mortality prediction model for ICUs patients, and to assess its performance relative to prediction based on the APACHE II scoring system. Methods We used the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care version III (MIMIC-III) database to build our model. After comparing the APACHE II with 6 typical machine learning (ML) methods, the best performing model was screened for external validation on anther independent dataset. Performance measures were calculated using cross-validation to avoid making biased assessments. The primary outcome was hospital mortality. Finally, we used TreeSHAP algorithm to explain the variable relationships in the extreme gradient boosting algorithm (XGBoost) model. Results We picked out 14 variables with 24,777 cases to form our basic data set. When the variables were the same as those contained in the APACHE II, the accuracy of XGBoost (accuracy: 0.858) was higher than that of APACHE II (accuracy: 0.742) and other algorithms. In addition, it exhibited better calibration properties than other methods, the result in the area under the ROC curve (AUC: 0.76). we then expand the variable set by adding five new variables to improve the performance of our model. The accuracy, precision, recall, F1, and AUC of the XGBoost model increased, and were still higher than other models (0.866, 0.853, 0.870, 0.845, and 0.81, respectively). On the external validation dataset, the AUC was 0.79 and calibration properties were good. Conclusions As compared to conventional severity scores APACHE II, our XGBoost proposal offers improved performance for predicting hospital mortality in ICUs patients. Furthermore, the TreeSHAP can help to enhance the understanding of our model by providing detailed insights into the impact of different features on the disease risk. In sum, our model could help clinicians determine prognosis and improve patient outcomes.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Gray ◽  
Douglas K. Richardson ◽  
Marie C. McCormick ◽  
Donald A. Goldmann

Objective. To examine the impact of admission-day illness severity on nosocomial bacteremia risk after consideration of traditional risk determinants such as birth weight and length of stay. Methods. The hospital courses for 302 consecutive very low birth weight (less than 1500 g) infants admitted to two neonatal intensive care units were examined for the occurrence of nosocomial coagulase-negative staphylococcal bacteremia. Using both cumulative incidence and incidence density as measures of bacteremia risk, we explored the relation between illness severity (as measured by the Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology [SNAP]) and bacteremia both before and after birth weight adjustment. In addition, the effect of bacteremia on hospital resource use was estimated. Results. Coagulase-negative staphylococcus was the most common pathogen noted in blood cultures drawn at 48 hours after admission or later. It was isolated on at least one occasion in 53 patients (cumulative incidence of 17.5 first episodes per 100 patients). These episodes occurred during 7652 days at risk, giving an incidence density of 6.9 initial bacteremias per 1000 patient-days at risk. As expected, when compared with the nonbacteremic group, bacteremic patients were of lower birth weight (888 ± 231 vs 1127 ± 258 g; P < .01) and gestational age (26.4 ± 2.1 vs 28.9 ± 2.8 weeks; P < .01). In addition, these patients were more severely ill on admission (SNAP 17.3 ± 6.5 vs 12.2 ± 5.8; P < .01). Even after birth weight stratification, the risk of bacteremia by both measures increased with higher SNAP scores. For example, among infants with birth weights greater than 1 kg, 25% of the most severely ill patients (SNAP 20 and higher) experienced at least one bacteremic episode, whereas the rates seen in infants with intermediate (SNAP 10 to 19) and low illness severity (SNAP 0 to 9) were 8.6% and 3.0%, respectively (χ2 for trend = 7.25; P < .01). Multivariate linear regression showed that bacteremia was associated with a prolongation of neonatal intensive care unit stay of 14.0 ± 4.0 days (P < .01) and an increase in hospital charges of $25 090 ± 12 051 (P < .05), even after adjustment for birth weight and admission-day SNAP. Conclusions. Nosocomial coagulase-negative bacteremia is an important complication among very low birth weight infants. Assessment of illness severity with SNAP provides information regarding nosocomial infection risk beyond that available from birth weight alone.


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