Abstract
Background: Older adults with syncope are commonly treated in the emergency department. Clinical decision rules have been developed to assess syncope patients, but there have been no application or comparative studies in older Chinese cohorts until now. This study aimed to compare the values of five existing rules in predicting the short-term adverse outcomes of older patients. Methods: From September 2018 to February 2021, older Chinese patients (≥60 yr) with syncope admitted to our hospital were investigated and evaluated by the Risk Stratification of Syncope in the Emergency Department (ROSE) rule, the San Francisco Syncope Rule (SFSR), the FAINT rule, the Canadian Syncope Risk Score (CSRS) and the Boston Syncope Criteria (BSC). After a one-month follow-up, the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive values (PPV), negative predictive values (NPV), positive likelihood ratios (PLR), and negative likelihood ratios (NLR) of each aforementioned rule were calculated and compared. Results: A total of 171 patients, with a mean age of 75.65±8.26 years and 48.54% male, were analysed in the study. Fifty-eight patients were reported to have experienced short-term adverse incidents during the month. The neurally mediated syncope group showed a significant sex-specific difference in adverse incidences but the cardiac syncope group did not. There were some factors associated with significant differences in adverse incidences, such as a history of hypertension, congestive heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, as well as the levels of SpO2, B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and troponin T (TnT), while the levels of haemoglobin and creatinine suggested potential significance. In order of the ROSE, SFSR, FAINT, CSRS and BSC rules in the analysis, the sensitivities were 81.03%, 77.59%, 93.10%, 74.14% and 94.83%, the specificities were 86.73%, 84.96%, 38.94%, 60.18% and 56.64%, the NPVs were 89.91%, 88.07%, 91.67%, 81.93% and 95.52%, and the NLRs were 0.22, 0.26, 0.18, 0.43 and 0.09, respectively. Conclusions: This study revealed that the five mentioned rules for syncope risk stratification, with their own characteristics, all showed crucial significance for screening older adults. Therefore, physicians in the emergency department should flexibly understand and judge older patients’ potential risks according to the actual clinical situations.
Risk stratification of adult emergency department syncope patients to predict short-term serious outcomes after discharge (RiSEDS) study
