A Scoring System for Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome

Abstract

Critically ill patients admitted to a contemporary intensive care unit (ICU) rarely die as a consequence of the progression of the disease process which resulted in their admission to hospital. Instead, and despite the widely heterogeneous processes which precipitate ICU admission, the most common cause of mortality in the ICU is a syndrome variously known as multiple system failure [1], multiple organ failure [2], multiple systems organ failure [3], or, more recently, the multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) [4]. Moreover death from MODS usually results not so much from failure of vital organ function refractory to support with existing technology, but from the conscious decision of the responsible intensivist that functional recovery is improbable, and that prolongation of exogenous life support is inappropriate. Expressed differently, critically ill patients rarely die because we are unable to ventilate them; they die because we decide to turn off the ventilator.